Log Horizon: New World Symphony
by Arrowkneesan
Summary: There were many players trapped in the Catastrophe. Some fell to despair. Some refused to give up. Some went exploring. Others decided to go be heroes. But what's a player to do when thrust into a new world?
1. Prologue

The Launch of Homesteading the Novasphere was well anticipated. Throughout Europe, and the Americas, vacation days were booked. Sitters were arranged for. Children were sent off to school early. Some children faked being sick. Some adult children faked being sick. Some skill professionals called in sick. The Wall Street Journal blithely estimated that the widely anticipated expansion would cost the country at least twenty billion dollars in lost productivity. wrote several really boring list-articles about Elder Tale to celebrate.

Atharva's PR team had hit the global convention circuit hard in the months leading up to the release. The new expansion would come with a complete graphic overhaul, and with powerful new abilities for all classes. Some critics felt that the Elder Tale engine was simply too long in the tooth and should be gracefully set aside so a Next-Gen MMO could take its place. The Escapist, and the JimQuisition, panned the expansion. Waving his enormous purple dildo bat in the stern manner that only a vlogging Englishman can manage, Jim Sterling lambasted Homesteading the Novasphere as simply being more of the same MMO fare. However, pre-sales didn't lie, and the critics were largely ignored/ Atharva Inc & its partner agencies were soon swimming in cash as more than a million players pre-ordered the game. Burger King even ran a promotion where Whopper Tokens could be exchanged for in-game items.

Deep within a specially designed data-center, operated by none other than Amazon Web Services, an absolute behemoth of a system was preparing to handle the anticipated load. The CEO of Atharva was determined to avoid congestion. However it wasn't a singe server per se that ran Elder Tale, but a massive cluster distributed across the world. If Elder Tale was run on a single machine, that machine would have a few Petabytes of RAM. The special distributed server structure, designed by a team of MIT alumni, was the sort of computer architecture that gave YouTube's army of amateur blogger-philosophers the strangest sort of boner. The Simulated-Reality Theory, was definitely in vogue.

The expansion would launch at approximately Midnight, May 3rd. Thanks to some negotiating by Atharva's Korean and Japanese partners, it was decided that it would launch at midnight, May 3rd. While the timing was unpopular with European players, Elder Tale had achieved some degree of popularity in China with the last expansion, and South Korea was home to many, many Elder Tale players. Across Southeast Asia, net cafes were booked solid. Gold was bought and sold. Gear was prepared.

The time was 7:56 AM PST, May 2nd. Game On.


	2. First Light

7:57...

7:58...

"You ready James?" his cousin Anna called out. She was his Elder Tale buddy. She played bard.

"Yeah. One second." He reached for the can of Monster he kept on the desk next to his computer. Cylindrical, smooth, and tasty.

There was the click of a can of Monster opening, and a bubbling noise. This early morning launch thing was rough. Caffeine was good. But he was

Vertigo, blind swordsman, and retainer to the Bard Isami. Time for some heroing.

7:59...

"And we're on. We're going to be exploring some of the new zones. I'll describe them to you as we go. This should be good."

First there was a ringing in his ears, which escalated to a dull roar. His head swam, and the air felt heavy, like he was underwater. This went on for some time, and then stopped abruptly.

He was laying on the ground. Did he have a seizure? "Anna?!" he called out. "Something's wrong." The ground felt nothing like carpet-just cobblestones and dirt. His head swam

again and he shivered. Then he saw Theldesia.

8:00...

"WHAT THE FUCK?!"

It's absolutely terrifying to suddenty have a fully functioning visual cortex-especially when you have no concept of what sight is.

Vertigo sat in the middle of the roadway, entranced by a mixture of curiosity and utter terror.

The colored blotches grew larger. He felt something touch his face. That was a hand. "James, it's me, Anna-or more accurately my character Isami. I...don't know what's going on." There was fear in his cousin's voice. "But we seem to be in Elder Tale."

"In?"

"Yeah, like that what happened with that Sword Art game you tried to beta test."

"But that didn't work" protested Vertigo, covering his eyes. "Didn't the developer say it had something to do with there being no developed visual cortex for the Nerve Gear to interact with?"

"Well for whatever reason, it worked now. And no one seems to have told the game that you are blind." Isami, or the colored blotches that were her avatar, smiled-or at least he

thought it was a smile, she sounded happy. "This is fucked up, inexplicable, and flat out impossible."

"You told me once that colors were like...a feeling. Are they where the blotches separate from each other?"

The absurdity of the situation dawned on him. What he was feeling was factually impossible. There was no technology capable of doing such

a thing. Even rudimentary efforts to restore sight to the blinded via cybernetics only worked on those with a functioning visual cortex. Thanks to a perinatal ischemic stroke

Vertigo had never seen anything in his life. Yet this was definitely Isami's Avatar. The sound of his cousins voice was spot-on. The shape was also definitely human, and felt absolutely real.

The bard's head moved up and down. "Yeah."

The street was similar to how he had imagined it. A long road, flanked by tall dark things-those must be buildings. The buildings were covered in...something.

"Isami?"

"Yeah?"

"These blotches I'm...seeing they're shapes right?"

Isami couldn't imagine what Vertigo was going through. "What about them?"

"The...fuzzy stuff on the buildings. It's not part of the buildings. It...feels...different from them, like it has a different taste."

She thought fast. He could be talking about color or texture. "Are you talking about how it feels when you touch something, or something else?"

"I think it's something else" he responded. "Am I touching it?"

"No, we're across the street from it. So you must be talking about what we call, color."

"Miss Isami..." he began. "...I know there are different colors. Which color is this?"

She grabbed his hand. Leading him across the street, she guided Vertigo's hand to touch the green moss that covered the building.

"This is moss" he announced matter-of-factly. "We have some of it in mother's rock garden."

"Is this the color you want to know about?" asked Isami.

"Yeah. What is this color called?"

Tears of joy welled up in the bard's eyes. "This is called green."

Vertigo grinned what must have been the widest grin ever, an instinctual, unapolegetic display of unadulterated joy. "Your shirt is green! The moss is green!"

"YOU..." he turned and grabbed a random passing player "...YOUR HAT IS GREEN." The Foxtail, some sort of Cleric, looked very uncomfortable. You would be too if some random person grabbed you in the street and gleefully shouted about the color of your hat.

Vertigo soon realized what he was doing. He let go. "Sorry..." he apologized "...I'm just a bit overwhelmed right now." The Foxtail player hurried off down the street.

"You can't just grab random strangers" scolded Isami. "That's not even a thing in the real world."

Vertigo shrunk back. "I'm sorry it's just that this is so...so...so. It's like having an entire concert in your face, but it's not sound it's light. It's...AMAZING!"

Isami put her finger to her lip "Shh..." She then pointed up.

He stared back at her blankly. "What are you doing with your hand?"

She sighed. "Right. Forgot you wouldn't get visual cues. These motions are called hand gestures. The first is called 'shushing' - you make it when you want to discreetly inform someone that they need to be quiet. The second gesture is called pointing. To point, extend your index finger towards the person, place, or thing you want to draw attention to. It's the visual equivalent of putting extress stress on a syllable in order to emphasize a word. Now I need you to tilt your head back, this is called looking up, and see what I'm trying to draw your attention to."

"Why?"

Isami's eyes did a funny thing. "Because I told you to. There's something wonderful you need to see."

Tilting his head back, Vertigo saw the dawn. "It's like...an orchestra...like...Saint Saens" his voice trailed off.

This was the beginning of the first day.

Author's note: The best part of Log Horizon, are the questions the series asks, and answers. The anime puts much more of a focus on exploring the implications of the catastrophe, rather than chasing distinct story arcs. This is a hallmark of good science fiction-it asks questions, and comes up with plausible answers. Where do monsters get all that gold? What would people do without the player characters? Would NPCs have lives? Would they be real?

Roderick says at one point that player personalities are changing to match avatars. It is apparent that per the rules of the setting, the state of an avatar body does impact the mind of the player. In Vertigo's case, he suddenly had a fully functioning visual cortex-as no sane developer would willingly code blindness into a heroic fantasy MMO except as a removable de-buff.


	3. It's all a game

Ouch. Isami winced. Once again, Vertigo had introduced himself to a wall. The sudden transition to being sighted, while inexplicable and undoubtedly wonderful, had proved to be more than a little jarring for her cousin. The last few days had been rough. To the sighted, it is trivial to go through life understanding concepts such as light, darkness, shadows, and perspective. Individuals born with the ability to see invariably undergo decades of hand-eye coordination and visual spatial awareness training. Vertigo's newly functioning visual cortex hon the other hand had no such experience.

If it hadn't been so pathetic, she reflected, it would have been funny or maybe at least meme-worthy. They could call it the Wall Challenge and get thousands of views on Youtube.

Vertigo stumbled back into the main room of the tavern, nursing a welt on his head. "Stupid fucking door" he muttered.

"That was a wall...again" Isami held back a laugh. Vertigo had been on a divine mission for the past few days to introduce his face to every door-frame, and wall in Theldesia. She had tried to help, but there was only so much she could do. Did the game expect her to play occupational therapist?

"Stupid fucking wall." Vertigo glowered at the offending lathe and plaster with the rage of a thousand burning suns, and slumped into a chair, dejected "What the hell are we gonna do?"

Isami waved the barmaid over. "The only thing misguided youths do in America when they have too much time, lack of parental or legal supervision, and easy access to alcohol" she said, raising a fist into the air. "Drink ourselves stupid!" She promptly ordered three of everything on the drinks menu.

The samurai sighed as the barmaid turned away, holding a jingling pouch of coins. "On the topic of food-I would PK someone for a real fucking cheeseburger right now." Despite its appearances, the food of Theldesia sucked-the only exception being alcohol. The beer was flavorless, mildly alcoholic, and had a taste to it that was somewhere between cat piss, and Coors Light. Somewhere, a trapped German player was raging against the injustice of Heaven.

"Or a shower" offered Isami. "Have you -seen- what passes for um, plumbing here-or the lack thereof?"

Vertigo nodded. Medieval plumbing was terrifying. "I suppose it's worse for girls because um...uh" His voice trailed off. Having been blind from birth he'd never actually seen a naked woman in his life and didn't really have any idea of what sort of problems not having modern plumbing could cause for a woman.

Isami slapped him upside the head. "...Because I said so!" She looked visibly uncomfortable.

"Yeah, of course." Vertigo wisely decided to stop talking. The past few days had obviously strained Anna. Most of the stress was probably his fault too. Lots of walking into walls. The sky was gorgeous. She had been driving herself.

"Anyhow" she chirped. "Let's get wasted!"

Elsewhere in the tavern, players chattered amongst themselves. In one corner, far from where Isami and Vertigo were seated, four hulking shapes in heavy armor talked in hushed tones. The South Angel HeadHunterZ, a guild of casual PVP enthusiasts, were as worried as anyone else. Many of them had been logged on for the expansion launch, and now the guild had to face the prospect of being trapped in Elder Tale.

Adjunct Karlstein, an Elf Guardian, sighed. "Even if we were trapped like what happened with Sword Art Online, and that experimental NERV Gear stuff-don't you think our families would have pulled us out of the game by now? I didn't get stupid messages about being trapped here."

"But that might just mean that our kidnapper(s), doesn't want to make himself, or themselves known yet" countered Nazarick, a Ritian Cleric and one of the HeadHunterz battle-healers. "The fuckers are probably getting off on it too. Think about it, they have power over others..." He smoothed his jet-black hair back and smiled "...the ultimate thrill."

Naz, that's kinda fucking creepy the way you say that" added T_Wolf, the HeadHunterz resident Foxtail Pirate-Glassblower. Nazarick sounded a little too gleeful about the idea. T_Wolf adjusted his rakish green hat. He felt naked without his eye-patch. "I mean, I like the game and all-and actually being -in- Elder Tale? This is amazing! But still...what's happening to our bodies while stuck in the game?"

"Well, in the best-case scenario-we're all stuck sitting in our own shit and piss while the authorities try to get us out of the game. My wife is going to kill me." Karlstein moaned.

"Why would you call that a best-case scenario?" Nazarick again, a drop of sunshine as ever.

The adjunct battle leader of the HeadHunterZ sighed, and hung his head in dejection. "In the worst case, we're all dead, our families are in mourning, my three kids don't have a father, my wife is a widow at 26-and I'm stuck in the weirdest afterlife ever." He gave Nazarick a death-glare. "Or maybe I'm in hell, since you're here too." There was no secret among the HeadHunterz about how Karlstein felt about Nazarick. Nazarick was a great battle-healer, but he had an almost pathological tendency to creep on female players, or male players with female characters. He claimed it was for the lulz, but most players who knew Nazarick for any period of time found that it was too consistent to be just for the lulz. If the guild had been a close knit raiding guild, they probably would have kicked him out years ago. "Heh" he snorted "This is probably a game, just like that Sword Art one, only this time nothing matters. We can do whatever we want until they fix it!"

T_Wolf looked at the bottom of his glass. Once again it was empty, this was an outrage. "I think we need more alcohol. He stood, and raised raised a hand to call over one of the NPCs who worked at the tavern. "Another round." Sitting down, the Foxtail continued. "Anyways, I don't think my PC could do shit like this—the thing has a hard time running the game at all. I was playing Elder Tale on the lowest graphics setting. I should be seeing tons of lag, and reduced draw distances, but damn—this looks way better, and it's not like I had a VR headset or anything."

A haggard looking lander girl with almost comically large breasts soon came over to the table carrying a tray of beer. She set them down, collected the gold, and was turning to walk away when a very drunken Nazarick stood up, and grabbed her from behind. Her tray clattered to the floor. "Hey T_Wolf, get a load of these!"

Nazarick forced the woman to turn around—it wasn't as if a level 15 lander could resist a level 90. There was the sound of cloth tearing as Nazarick ripped the front of the woman's dress open, exposing her to the entire tavern. "Cmon, get a handful. You too Karl, Catz" The Ritian groped and tugged at the lander woman's breasts. "See, nice and soft." He wiggled his tongue lecherously "What, you faggots scared of a pair of tits?" The woman was shaking in fright.

T_Wolf, mildly intoxicated, hadn't quite grasped the situation. Karlstein stood up, ramrod straight. "Naz. You have exactly five seconds to stop that, or I'm going make you eat shit. One..."

Nazarick rolled his eyes, and squeezed the woman's breasts hard. She cried out in pain. "Oh come the fuck on Karl. This is a game. None of this fucking matters" He looked to the rest of the players in the tavern. "Didn't you read the M rating on the box? We can do whatever we like. None of this matters. I'm not real, you're not real..." He leaned down, and whispered into her ear "...you're just a toy" The lander woman thrashed, and tried to scream. Nazarick clamped a hand firmly over her mouth. Damn he was hard right now. This was just like watching a butterfly try to fly after you'd ripped its wings off.

"Two..." Karlstein continued his count. If Nazarick was acting like a child, he was going to treat the idiot like one. Catzpawr nodded in silent agreement.

Nazarick continued to goad his guild makes From across the room, Vertigo saw blood starting to pool around the Cleric's gauntlets. The player was holding onto the lander woman tight enough to do HP damage. She tried to cried and sob, but the cleric's other gauntlet muffled her. "We'll have none of that screaming...you'll upset the other guests" cooed to his victim. "Be a good girl, at least till we're alone." He began to drag her towards the stairs. The other landers in the rooms stared in shock.

Isami was terrified. The thought of players committing sexual assault against people of the land, or other players, simply hadn't occurred to her; it probably hadn't occurred to anyone else either. There was this strange, paralyzing horror that wasn't like anything she had felt in Elder Tale, or in real life. There were other people in the room, and that man in the black armor—why weren't they stopping him? Someone do something. Please.

Vertigo didn't know enough to be fazed by the hulking Cleric's presence. He hadn't seen enough of the sighted world for it to paralyze him with horror. Human culture tends to plant the bystander effect in one's soul. The bystander effect means that people are less likely to help a stranger if others are around. There are numerous theories behind the why of the bystander effect, but the effect is a fact of human psychology.

James was different. He'd been blind until three days ago. The other players and NPCs in the room simply didn't register to him. All James, no the hero, Vertigo saw was the eyes of the lander woman, begging for help. He played Elder-Tale because he wanted to be an adventurer, to be a hero. James didn't want to see things like this in such a beautiful world. Making the decision that he was going to act as the hero he had wanted to be would act, Vertigo rose from his seat. Karlstein wasn't going to make it to the count of three, and Nazarick wasn't going to make it to the stairs.

Vertigo the Samurai charged, his legs flailing comically in a half-stagger. There was no time to get this walking thing down anyhow. He'd have weeks for that. What mattered now was introducing Nazarick's face to the business end of a katana as quickly as possible. Other than this, he wasn't thinking. He wasn't planning either. He was just pissed off at what this asshole in the black armor had been doing to a woman. With no idea how targeting, aggro, and PVP combat worked, he was fighting blind—figuratively speaking. However he knew that he had a sword, and that you hit things with it to deal damage.

Samurai's Challenge

Naz reeled backwards, letting go of the woman, who dove under the nearest table. His attacker hadn't done much actual damage, but damn that had actually hurt. The cleric looked over to Karlstein: "Happy now? Someone stood up to play hero, and I let the NPC go. There's always more where she came from."

He turned back to Vertigo "You on the other hand, you and I are going to have a good time." The Cleric loomed over Vertigo, a hulking figure armed with a wickedly sharp battle-axe. Nazarick was huge, filling his field of vision, well-armored, and a war-priest. "I think I need to teach you why you ought to know better than to fuck with the HeadHunterz."

Adrenaline beginning to fade, Vertigo felt very...small. He began to back away, casting a sideways glance at the tavern door. A duel with a level 90 is not something he'd planned for. Didn't the guard break up PVP fights in safe zones

Nazarick saw where the samurai was looking, and laughed. "Tut...tut...didn't you know little Samurai that the Guard can't save you here-taverns are neutral." Nazarick casually spun his battle-axe, like a baton and advanced. "What's a weeaboo Samurai doing outside of Yamato anyhow? I suppose it won't matter, once I cut your legs off."

Vertigo stood facing Nazarick with his sword, a Wind-Cutter Katana, drawn. The blade was nothing special, a standard piece of questing gear—and the stats weren't that great. He and Isami had only picked it because it made whooshing sound effects when it was used, allowing the formerly blind player to have some sense that he was attacking with a sword.

"You'd should stop doing that kind of thing" he stated, in a weird, deadpan tone.

"When we're finished, I'll pick up right where I left off" Nazarick snapped, maintaining eye contact with Karlstein. "Whatcha gonna do, kick me out of the guild Karl? I know you can't do that. The guild-master isn't even logged on. You wanna lose your guild's top battle-healer?"

Karlsteing growled: "After today, I wouldn't want you if you were the top healer in Elder Tale. You've totally crossed the fucking line today asshole. Fuck you, and your game mentality. I might not be able to kick you out of the guild, but I can still strip you of privileges, and empty your guild bank."

Nazarick looked shocked for a moment "Don't you fucking dare" he scowled.

"Oh I will" Karlstein grinned "Just try me."

Across the tavern, Isami had already been preparing for the shit-storm taking place. She'd known James since they were toddlers. The last time he had been like this, had been at a playground at the age of 7. A boy one or two years older than her had been pulling her hair. Despite being blind, James had knocked said boy to the ground and given him two black eyes, knocked out a tooth—and had only stopped wailing on the bully with his fists because Anna had pulled him away. Her blind cousin, never really had developed a good sense of when to back down, or quit. When he used that low, earnest voice something was about to go down.

I understand Anna said over the party-chat Roll for Initiative, I'll back you up

It's important to note that at this point in his life, Vertigo didn't really know what he was doing. When it was a game, Anna had set up his braille hot-keys for him—and he had used a text reader add-on to navigate menus. He knew the names of his abilities, their sound effects, and what they did, but he didn't understand how to use the menu to activate them, or positioning. So a carefully thought out plan was out of the question.

Time to improvise, and by improvise, Vertigo meant spamming Samurai abilities in the hopes something would connect. This was the equivalent of mashing your hotkeys at random. Screaming at the top of his lungs like a developmentally disabled banshee the samurai charged and introduced Nazarick's mouth to his spaulder. He

Nazarick looked surprised for approximately half a second. Surprise was then supplanted by confusion. What was a level 49 Samurai even trying to accomplish here? Given the level difference, he could wreck this guy with auto-attacks alone. Confusion lasted a moment longer, and then a shark-like, predatory grin spread across the cleric's bloodied face "Alright then. Congratulations you stupid little fuck. That actually hurt. Now, you're fucking dead."

He swung his axe. Vertigo dodged, having adopted a stance that boosted his evasion. He couldn't hope to block, or parry a hit from a level 90, auto-attack or no. So he decided to dodge. Lead the cleric round and round. Don't let him back you into a corner. Dodge-tanking is the way to go. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the cleric's companions, the Fox-Tail with the green hat, help the lander barmaid get up, draping his cloak around her. The guardian that had been with Nazarick barked orders. "T_Wolf, Get her to the kitchen. Catz, you and I will stand watch. Naz, you're on your own, forever."

Oh good. Mission successful.

 _Karlstein has left the party_

 _T_Wolf has left the party_

 _You are no longer in a party_

"Gonna leave me like that?" Nazarick snapped at T_Wolf. "And I thought HeadHunterZ were suppose to fight together."

T_Wolf shrugged, stepping away from Nazarick "Whatever man." He parroted his former companion's words "It's just a game. None of this matters." He laughed, and adjusted his green hat. "Hah. I can't believe you're suddenly afraid of fighting a level 49 Samurai—you're level 90." He spat at the cleric "Fucking pussy."

"Fine" sighed the Cleric. "I'll dismember this guy. Then you can go find yourselves a new battle-healer."

Karlstein took up a position at the kitchen door, his great-sword at the ready. T-Wolf brushed past him, with the woman. , his great-sword ready. _If Naz is going to be that much of a bitch about not getting to feel up some stupid lander woman, I don't want to party with him ever again_

 _Seriously_ T_Wolf chimed in on the new party-chat. _He's been creeping me the fuck out since we were trapped here. He's like one of those D &D players that has to try and sleep with the hookers in every damn town, or tries to get your group to try FATAL because he thinks Pathfinder isn't "adult" enough for him. Either way he's just a creep. Can't say I'll be sad to see him go_

 _About that though_ Karlstein began _Our glorious Guild-master was the only one with kick-privileges. He's not online. I may have officer rank, but I can't make him leave the guild or ban him from the guild-hall. We should put in safe-guards as soon as possible_


	4. Keikyomoudou no Samurai

_Some months before..._

"So I found a way for you to play Elder Tale with me" Anna said excitedly. "I think you'll love all the work the environmental sound designers put into the game."

"Really?" James was surprised. "You know I can't see shit. We even tried the prototype NERV gear at PAX that one time. My visual cortex doesn't work right." He heard his cousin set something down on a table.

"Well, normally that -would- be a issue" admitted Anna. "But I found an add on that can let me take care of all the positioning, and movement stuff, while you handle the role-play. It's kinda like a Multi-Box add-on."

"So I can pretend to play, while you do all the gaming?" He found the prospect suspect. Elder-Tale had been Anna's favorite game for a long time. But video games just didn't do it for the blind teenager.

Anna grimaced. "Aren't you the optimist today?" Somewhere in the background a dog barked. Lucy had probably seen a cat, again. "This is the real-deal, the Atharva-endorsed Blind Swordsman add-on, based on the accessibility suite API. Merry Christmas, by the way."

James knew about the Accessibility Suite. After the Sword Art massacre, and the subsequent banning of NERV Gear technology, developers had had to return to more creative means of making gaming more accessible despite the efforts of Disability Rights Advocates. A landmark Supreme Court case had held that the American's with Disabilities Act did not over-rule the United Nations Treaty on Electronic Interfaces,

While some clandestine Chinese and North Korean manufacturers still made NERV gear for illicit purposes, importing, or possessing it was a good way to have men with guns kick in your door, and arrest everyone in sight. Some renegade factory owners had even been executed.

"Plus" added his cousin. "I heard the upcoming expansion is implementing RealSound—a comprehensive upgrade of the atmosphere sound set. With a good headset you'll be able to hear someone walking up behind you, every drop of rain."

"Now -that- sounds interesting" said James. "No pun intended. So how does it work?" He heard Anna's PC hum to life, the fans whirring and clicking as it went through its boot sequence. Sorta like multi-boxing." Anna clicked on a few items on her desktop. "I control some of your character from an auxiliary user interface. It's not gonna be the easiest thing in the world to manage, so I don't think we can do raids and stuff—but we can at least play games, rather than having you listen to me click furiously and describe what's going on."

"I guess..." answered James, scratching his nose "...that I need to pick a character class."

"I think I've found you one already" chirped Anna. She clicked on something "Samurai. It's tanky, hard to kill, and doesn't require much positioning. Blind-Swordsman was proto-typed to work with it first. So I've got an idea for a bard build that will work well with it too. I buff your attacks, you kill stuff like crazy. There's just one problem."

"What's that?"

"We'll have to create characters on the Japanese server to have you roll Samurai. I'll have to set up a GeoProxy, and separate Elder Tale Accounts. While the ping times will be a little long, we're just going to be doing some questing and leveling, so I don't think it will be much of an issue."

"But I don't speak Japanese" James protested. "How are we going to understand anything?"

"They've got a really good automatic translator." Anna wasn't kidding. The Elder-Tale translator could perform accurate literal translation of most phrases, although it did poorly with idioms. Atharva was heavily invested in translation, and made millions of dollars every year just licensing out the Elder-Tale Translator. "I've got an idea for a bard build that will work really well with with Samurai." She left out the fact that she'd planned optimum gearing for them, up through level 60. "We can transfer back to South Angel after we reach the minimum level required to us the Fairy Ring network."

James made a face that he thought was an approximation of a smile. "So when do we start?"

Anna's delicate fingers flew over a keyboard, typing furiously. "Give me an hour."

Soon, a bard and a samurai would appear in Akihabara under the light of a waxing crescent moon.


	5. Baka no Samurai

Adopting an offensive stance Vertigo wasn't going to wait for Nazarick to throw up any defensive spells or buffs. Hell, he wasn't going to wait for the cleric to start swinging. The cleric was nearly twice his level and a battle-healer, according to his ally. There was only one thing for it. Attack, interrupt, and hope. From across the room, it was spectacular. Every Ace-Move in Vertigo's arsenal exploded on the Cleric in a fireworks display of violence. Samurai had long cool-downs, but in a one-versus-one environment, their abilities were nothing short of impressive. Several of the top duelists in Elder-Tale were Samurai, and although there was a massive level gap-a fight like this was the Samurai class's forte.

Time after time, Nazarick tried bringing up his menu, and activating his offensive abilities, but the menu kept getting in the way of his ability to dodge as the samurai landed blow after blow.

 _Hot damn!_ Karlstein messaged his party members. _Check out Naz's HP. The Samurai's got him nearly at half already. This is insane._

 _You think it's the menu-problem?_ T_Wolf responded. _I know we had issues with that when we were testing out combat the other day_

 _If it's that_ Katzpawr chimed in. _Wall-walker seems to be having no problem with it. However, I've been counting his cool-downs. Naz still has this. Wall-walker just doesn't have the DPS to drop him, especially if you factor in Naz's heals_

 _What's bugging me..._ T_Wolf again _...is that the Royal Guard hasn't shown up._

 _That's a game-feature_ Karlstein answered. _I don't think you guys would remember it, but back in the day there was a series of PVP quests for the Hitman subclass that required you to kill another player in a tavern. The quest was removed from the game, but they couldn't redo the zone designations for some reason thanks to a coding mistake._

Frustrated, enraged, and hurting Nazarick decided to forego ability use, and just beat the idiot Samurai down with his axe. Vertigo was out of abilities, it was time to defend. The armor juggernaught swung its axe faster than anyone -should- be able to swing something that large. Sparks flew as he drove Vertigo back across the room, landing a few solid hits. Vertigo's HP dropped precipitously. Three of Nazarick's attacks cut his own health-bar in half, and they hurt, a lot. He couldn't afford to take any more hits. Focusing on evasion, he kept attacking, chiseling away at Nazarick's HP

 _How are you doing that?_ Isami asked over the telepathic network. Her cousin shouldn't be able to use his abilities that fast. The menu-system was as clunky as hell to fight with, making battles a tricky proposition at best. Just the day before, they'd nearly been killed by a pack of dire weasels because they couldn't use their abilities properly.

 _I don't know. I just -feel-_ Vertigo responded. He sidestepped Nazarick's battle axe, again.

Then it dawned on Isami. Instead of the menu, all you needed to activate skills was a specific intent. The only reason that Vertigo was still alive is that his opponent must be trying to use the Elder Tale menu-system to fight. Level 90s had far more options to chose from, so either the man with the battleaxe was having trouble deciding what to use, or the menu was clouding his vision. James on the other hand knew what his attacks were, but he didn't have the natural inclination to activate the visual menu to use them, so he was activating them by instinct. If she helped him out, they could win this. She'd set up his hot-keys after all.

Nazarick began to cast a healing spell.

 _Dissonance Scream._ With an ear-melting screech of her violin, Isami interrupted the cleric's healing spell. Nazarick looked surprised. Wasn't this a one-on-one duel? Then he saw the bard holding the violin. "WHY YOU LITTLE BITCH!" Nazarick roared in anger, charging at her, axe held high.

 _Samurai's Challenge._ Aheavy blow spun the Cleric around to face Vertigo.

"Eyes over here asshole" Vertigo knew at least the basics of tanking. Don't let the adds go after the spell-casters. Keep the hate focused. "If I was a Guardian, you'd be fucked."

"Fine" Nazarick growled, standing to his feet. "First, I'll spank the tank—and then I'm going to show that bard why this game has an M rating." He had only 5534 HP left, either he had to end this fast, or he had to survive long enough for his self-healing ability to reset before the next _Dissonance Scream_. Then it would become a battle of attrition. He was certain to win that.

 _Duet_ Isami slipped behind Nazarick, and drove her short sword into his thigh, finding a gap in the cleric's armor.

 _Critical Hit._ Now, she would mirror Vertigo's attacks, and have her own auto-attacks. As long as he maintained aggro, they could win this.

 _That bard joined in!_ Katzpawr was enjoying this. _And they're working as a team. If she's built right, I think Naz just lost this one. Larsen would boot him from the guild for this. Hell, it'd go on Youtube and he could never play his toon again from the infamy. God I love this game._

An interesting thing to note about Elder-Tale was that while sheer level differences -did- matter in the grand scheme of things, the difference between level brackets didn't have the steep roll-off that games like World of Warcraft had used. As a design choice, the developers had favored team-work over single-player character building. This decision showed in the design of classes like the Medicine Man or Kannagi. Differences in power were generally a matter of gear, and ability training, rather than raw XP. This had greatly contributed to the longevity of the game. Most classes were easy to learn, but very, very hard to master

 _Elegant Act_ Isami danced out of the way of Naz's battle-axe. Unlike Vertigo, she had a sense of positioning and a dancer's poise from years of ballet. This character was just her alt that she had built explicitly to compliment her cousin's Samurai build. Their arrangement was akin to a multi-box setup, and she was not a new player in any sense of the word. Every aspect of Vertigo's character had been built to compliment her bard, down to his gear. Apart, they weren't really optimized, but together they could punch far above their level bracket. The Japanese players called the build-style _Daisho_ , after the twin swords traditionally carried by Samurai.

 _Activate your katana_ instructed Isami over the telepathic link. _On the next Ace Move, we end it_

She struck again _Battle-Conduct_. Now Nazarick wouldn't notice her. This was crucial to her plan, which centered on her cousin's Wind-Cutter katana. While the blade wasn't the best sword for his tier—and was in fact something they had picked up nearly 12 levels ago, it had one peculiar quality which made the next part of her plan truly diabolical.

Upon activation, Vertigo's katana would change it's damage type to wind-element, instead of physical damage for 30 seconds. Wind-element was one of the rarest resistance types, meaning it would hit past most armor. More importantly however, the game interpreted the subsequent physical attacks, as being magical in nature. The system log even noted them as magical spells, allowing a bard with Maestro Echo to copy the strikes for almost 180% damage. Isami was -good- at playing the Prima Actor build, which focused on special attacks, and boosting allies by fighting alongside them. She'd done the math. This combo could pull the hate of a boss monster off of a good tank, if you weren't careful

While her trick wasn't unknown, it was unpopular and somewhat dated, as it was more of a burst DPS technique, and finding a tank willing to compromise on the quality of his equipment for the sake of one special technique was next to impossible Only veteran Elder-Tale Players would appreciate it.

Karlstein smiled inwardly. _So that's why the Samurai is carrying a Wind-Cutter_ he said on the new party-chat, that didn't include Nazarick. They _'re optimized to fight in tandem, with a weapon type tailored to punching through heavy armor. Despite the level difference, this fight's over. They're working together, and Nazarick isn't as good at activating his abilities because Naz doesn't seem to be as good at using the menu system as they are._

Vertigo's blade began to moan, low and guttural like the wind on a dark night.

 _Right. Activating the Wind-Cutter. Vacuum slash cooldown resets in 5...4..._ The air around the Samurai's sword began to shimmer, and Isami could hear the blade's signature howl, low and guttural start to rise to its signature piercing howl

 _Maestro Echo_ Isami activated her strongest song, overriding _Duet_ For the next 30 seconds, she would be copying Vertigo's attacks as if they were spells, doing 150-180% damage of the attack. In a whirlwind of blades, their combined damage skyrocketed, passing through Nazarick's physical armor like it wasn't there.

In a panic, Nazarick tried to parry or dodge, but it was no use. He had build the war-priest to take hits, and act as an armored damage sponge. The duo was just doing too much damage for him to absorb. _Dissonance Scream_ would shut down his emergency healing spells if he used them. Isami knew this too. If they kept of the pressure, the cleric would fall

T_Wolf clapped, visibly excited as the trio battled back and forth across the tavern. This was a great fight. Tandem tactics unseating an otherwise insurmountable foe. This was the sort of thinking you'd expect from veteran players, not newbies. "FINISH HIM" he yelled in his best impression of the Mortal Kombat Announcer.

 _VACUUM SLASH!_ Vertigo could see victory in sight. Nazarick saw it coming, and that was all. The Samurai drew a massive gash across the Cleric's chest, tearing through plate armor. There was only 1534 HP left.

 _VACUUM SLASH!_ Isami copied Vertigo's attack. Her short sword was of much higher quality than the Wind-Cutter. Where normally the damage would have been much less than her cousins, she exceeded it. 720 HP to go. The Cleric tried to activate an emergency healing ability. Too late. She nullified it with _Dissonance Scream._

 _GRAND FINALE!_ Driving her short-sword into Nazaricks Aorta, Isami was showered with blood as a fountain of gore erupted from his neck. _Critical hit_. The cleric slumped to the floor, drowning in his own blood. Three spotlights appeared out of nowhere, shining on the bard.

Isami's eyes went wide, and filled with fright. There was blood everywhere, shining in the limelight. She could smell it. Not knowing what to say, she felt the adrenaline fading. Nazarick's eyes were blank, and lifeless, blood pooling on the floor. The tavern was silent. "I...I...I..." she stammered _,_ not knowing what to say.

Karlstein rose from his seat and approached the bard, who was apparently in shock. Vertigo saw the guardian approach Isami, and began to move to intercept him. Karlstein brushed him aside. "Put your blade away Samurai. Not every Head Hunter is your foe today. I think your friend needs to sit down and take a breather before..."

Isami's head swam. Elder-Tale hadn't been this gory or gruesome. She emptied her guts on the tavern floor. No amount of gaming had prepared her for the visceral feeling that accompanied actually killing someone. As the world spun around her, the bard Isami fainted.

Quick as a snake, Karlstein grabbed the girl before she could suffer a nasty bump to the head. He wasn't sure what such an injury would do in this world, but he reasoned that anyone would appreciate not drowning in a puddle of blood and vomit. The guardian looked to Vertigo. "She's your party member right? We should get her out of here to a safe place. Naz will probably re-spawn in a few hours and that asshole is gonna be pissed off. Are you guys in a guild?"

"Uh, I'm not" answered Vertigo. "She's my cousin, we play this game together because..." Vertigo trailed off. He didn't know if he wanted to reveal the fact that the first time he'd seen anything was three days ago. The guardian looked at him expectantly for a few moments and then frowned.

"You don't have a guild do you?" Karlstein wasn't asking a question. Vertigo really wasn't a member of any guild. James had never seen the point as the Alt Anna used to play with him, was a Crafting Alt most of the time. Isami didn't even have much of a friends list unlike Anna's raid-geared characters.

"I think she does" the Samurai answered. "Something to do with building ships, and importing stuff from Korea."

T_Wolf piped up. "I think I know that guild. They're called Boatmurder and they're based down at the shipyards."


	6. Death

_Squish._ He felt a wet warmth spreading between his legs. His eyes only saw a pitch black darkness, and it felt like there was something heavy, almost suffocating. Nazarick frowned. _Christ. Did I just piss myself?_ He pushed the thing off him, it was a heavy blanket, and felt far heavier than it should. He was in a bed, a rather large bed by the look of it—something sized for a giant.

A foul, acrid stench wafted through his nostrils. Fucking hell, I did. This is the shittiest way to re-spawn, ever. He turned, and swung his legs off the side of the bed. I thought you re-spawned at the Cathedral. Anyhow, no sense laying in your own piss, it was time to figure out what the hell was going on. This body felt nothing like his adventurer body, and instead felt...familiar. This was his body, his real flesh-and-blood body. He had escaped! True, he'd pissed himself, but he'd escaped—or woken up. 3:33AM cast a baleful red glow from the alarm-clock sitting on the nightstand.

Standing up, he fell forward, and his head hit something with a great bang. His vision blurred and his head swam. He felt something warm snaking its way down his forehead. Ah fuck. He remembered this, vaguely. This wasn't Theldesia, or part of the game world. This was his own memories. He knew this night. But that meant...a paralyzing dread filled his heart. _No. No. Please God no! Not this._

"Yes this."

Nazarick turned his head to see his mother's boyfriend, sitting in a lawn chair in a dirty undershirt, and boxer shorts. This made no sense, at all. "It must be a dream" chuckled the thing. "That's what you were going to say next Randy, wasn't it?" The thing gestured to the bedroom door. "But it isn't-or at least not fully. You know what's going to happen next don't you little boy?"

At this point, Nazarick realized why he had fallen off the bed. Randy looked at his hands—they were the small, unscarred hands of a child. His legs were shorter in this vision. Suddenly the size of the bed made sense. His mouth felt dry, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He did know what was going to happen next. His mother's boyfriend was going to come through the door, drunk, see the soiled bed, and hit him. The doctors would later diagnose him with a traumatic brain injury.

His mother would then come up the stairs, screaming at Nate. Nate would end up hitting her as well. The man was violent when drunk. Randy could hear Nate's heavy feet, pounding on the stairs. It would all end with Nate going to prison—and Randy's mother blaming him for the breakup. As much of a bastard as Nate was, Nazarick remembered that his mother had really loved the man. When the strain of prison-visitations ended their relationship six months later, she would carry that resentment towards her son for the rest of her life. "Yes" he replied. "I know what happens next."

Not-Nate smiled, and clapped his hands. "Good, good. You're a quick one. I've watched this to the end" and I saw you there and thought to myself that it would only be polite to give you an out." Out of the corner of his eye, Nazarick saw his in-game menu flicker—and disappear. The footsteps stopped. Nazarick could hear the handle turning. A monster, a real monster would come through that door.

"An out?" he asked, not knowing what the creature meant. Nightmares typically don't try to bargain with you. His younger self was terrified of this thing. His older self, was numb to the fear. Whatever the creature was, and whatever peculiar horror it could bring, nothing could hope to compare to the man that was about to come through the bedroom door screaming.

"You're out of time" stated Not-Nate. "Perhaps when you come back here, we can talk about the matter again." With utter horror, Nazarick—no a frightened and hurt seven year old named Randy, turned to face the door. Light spilled around the edges of the door fr, name as Nate nearly tore the door off. His mother's boyfriend from 14 years ago was exactly as terrifying and demonic as Nazarick remembered. Randy screamed.

"DAMNIT!" roared Nate. Here came the punch. Randy lost consciousness, again.

 _Squish._ He felt a wet warmth spreading between his legs. His eyes only saw a pitch black darkness, and it felt like there was something heavy, almost suffocating. Nazarick frowned. Christ. Did I just piss myself? He pushed the thing off him, it was a heavy blanket, and felt far heavier than it should. He was in a bed, a rather large bed by the look of it—something sized for a giant.

Not-Nate was waiting for him in the dark. "So are you ever going to get tired of this little Randy? I've seen you scream, fight, and cry out hundreds of times now. The ending is always the same. You can't change anything here. You haven't got that sort of power. But..." Not-Nate seemed annoyed. "...you don't like giving up. That's a quality of some use to me. So now, be a good boy let's have a chat."

"Alright" Randy answered the thing, too exhausted and numb to the horror of it all to object. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

"Simple" answered Not-Nate. "I am what you might call an angel, after a fashion. My kind answer the call of a heart drenched in sorrow, and desperation. The subtle, sincere prayers of your heart echoed across the void." The footsteps at the door had stopped. "I answered the call of your heart." The thing looked across to the bedroom door. The handle began to turn. "It appears that we're out of time again my dear boy. Tut tut...that is unfortunate."

In came Nate, again. Randy didn't even blink as the closed fist knocked him unconscious for what must have been the hundreth time. Again the scene repeated.

"I want to set you, and the others free" answered Not-Nate, seamlessly beginning from where he had left off. "Thousands of souls, trapped in an unending cycle, separated from their families, from their lives by some silly game. I need you, Nazarick, to be my emissary, to be my prophet—to lead the world to Salvation."

The darkness was suffocating. "But why this?"

Not-Nate shrugged. "This was the easiest way to answer the deepest prayers of your heart. I can only influence this world-line at certain points." The creature sneered. "They devour without reason, that which they cannot comprehend. You and I shall give them a bitter pill."

Who was the creature talking about? Nazarick's mind raced. Who were they? What did they want? What was this...thing for that matter. The handle on the bedroom door began to turn. He was almost out of time. "They are the ones who trapped you here, in this dharma." The creature's anger and disgust was palpable. "They think you humans no more than a choice meal. They have fed before, and will feed again, like pigs at a trough." His menu still wouldn't come up.

Randy had had enough. "What must I do?"

"Make a sacrifice" the creature instructed, a weird light gleaming in its eyes, which started to look less, and less human. "And be reborn, a man set free from the darkness and pain of this world. Break the wheel of fate, and bring freedom to the captives."

In his mind, Nazarick saw visions of glory. He was in demand on every talk show, hailed as gaming's greatest hero. Dignitaries from many countries came to visit the one who had saved the three million trapped players. His mother even went on television saying how proud she was to have him as a son. The feelings of joy, accomplishment, and acceptance he felt were absolutely intoxicating. The matter settled itself in his mind quickly. He would be the one to save them all. Nazarick answered "I sacrifice, I sacrifice it all."

The door opened. His mother's boyfriend stormed into the room. Not-Nate grinned, and stood up, ramrod-straight. "In accordance with the ancient law, so let it be done. Do as thou will, and seek only thy heart's desires." Casually, the creature reached over, grabbed Nate by the neck, and twisted. There was a sickening snap, and it threw him aside like a rag doll. _Human joints should not move like that._ There was the sickening sound of snapping bones. A distant bell started to toll sonorously, the entire bedroom scene disintegrating into polygons of weird and impossible, gut-wrenching colors. Nazarick could hear his mother, screaming in the distance. His mind edited this out as being an unimportant detail. None of this was real. None of it mattered. This was all some sort of special game event, working off his memories. Not-Nate didn't even look the same anymore, but like something else entirely, something too real, and too awful for Nazarick to comprehend, much less describe.

The tolling of the bell grew louder and louder. Then, when it seemed like the tolling of the bells would make his head explode, Nazarick awoke in the Cathedral. He was back in Theldesia. Was it all a fever-dream?

His head swam, as memories fought. In one set of memories, he wet the bed, and his mother's boyfriend hit him. In the other set of memories, he was awoken by a police officer who carried him out to a patrol car. Randy would later have it explained to him by a sad and somber social worker, that his mother's apartment had been broken into, and both his mother, and her boyfriend had been murdered by a junkie looking for a fix. He remembered his life diverging into two separate streams, both surging and flowing on their own until...OW...they converged again at the Catastrophe. The streams repeated endlessly, nonsensically descending into gibbering chaos as his life played out two distinctly different paths, over and over, and over.

Suddenly it stopped, and he awoke at the Cathedral. Not wanting this to be another vision, he wiggled his extremities. Toes were there. Fingers were there. Nothing seemed to be broken. He called up the menu. His inventory was intact, though the system clock had advanced seven days. Nazarick turned his head, and saw light filtering through the rose-window of the cathedral. It was a soft, evening light. Light streamed through the rose window of the cathedral.

For a moment, the cleric was lost in the sublime beauty of the scene. He had been reborn, a new man—a hero. With work to do, a bargain to fulfill, and a destiny to seek, Nazarick stood up, stretched, and left the Cathedral, his battleaxe slung over his shoulder. Damn the evening sun was bright. His stats were higher. _Did I just gain two levels? This is weird as hell._ Revenge could wait. He had a world to save.

Elsewhere, in the sightless void between worlds, an intellect so alien to the thoughts of man, that it might as well be called an incomprehensible evil, felt a sublime sense akin to what humans might call satisfaction. All was going exactly as planned.

Author's Note: Yes. This chapter got weird, and I apologize if it got too dark. What does it have to do with Log Horizon? Part of the appeal of Log Horizon is that we see a functioning world. It's not really a character driven story.


	7. Gold-Seller

The southern California sun beat down on Vertigo. He tapped his foot impatiently outside of the South Auction House. Why the hell was Isami taking so long? Seriously. They had had to cross nearly the entire player-controlled zone to reach it, which had taken the better part of an hour on foot. From inside, he could hear the noise of things being bought and sold, and advertised.

In-game the process had been relatively straightforward for an MMO. You talked to an auctioneer, and posted your items for as high or low a price as you thought it would sell for. Prices would fluctuate up and down with demand. Some players even experimented with playing the markets like the stock market. Any item could be bought and sold, with some exceptions, and the auction house would take a certain percentage cut of each sale, removing gold from the economy. In this new world, the auction house was an ear-melting shouting contest.

The accountant sub-class, Isami had once told him, could even unlock an ability at higher levels that would reduce the percentage of the sale taken by the auction house. However since each character was restricted to a single subclass, and the accountant subclass was notoriously difficult to level, accountants with a high enough level for it to make them a significant amount of gold using just their discount, were very very rare.

An emaciated figure tugged at the Samurai's shirtsleeve. It was a haggard looking female adventurer in the default starting gear. She had the default appearance for a female dwarf, and came up to Vertigo's chest. "BESTGOLDSALESCOM?"

"Huh?" This was odd. "Er..." Vertigo looked down at her. "...can I help you?"

"BESTGOLDSALESCOM" repeated the woman. Ah, that makes sense. She was a bot, running a simple script to periodically advertise her owner's gold-selling business to players. Publicly, Atharva outlawed gold sales, and would even slap you with a temporary ban if they found evidence that you had purchased gold. Unofficially however, gold-selling to Elder Tale players was a massive business, especially on the American server. Most of the sales came from Chinese firms who would run armies of bots, and low-paid workers, to incessantly farm gold day in and day out. About $60 could get you a million gold at the current rates. But if the game was suddenly real, what should he do now? Was there even a right answer?

The dwarf woman let go of his shirtsleeve, and swung around in front of the samurai. She would not be ignored. Standing on her toes, as high as she could, the woman whispered her sales pitch again. "BESTGOLDSALESCOM #1 for Gold. Discreet, fast delivery, secure payment options!" God she stank. Had she had a bath in days? Was she propositioning him? The weirdness level of this world was off the charts.

Slowly he waved his hand back and forth in front of the woman's face. Her eyes moved, tracking the movement. Right, so there's something behind those eyes, but what? Vertigo backed away. Best not to agitate her further. He didn't pick up on all of the cues of the sighted world yet, but he was getting better. People used their eyes to track the movement of things they had focused their attention on.

The dwarf stamped her foot angrily "BESTGOLDSALESCOM!" Was she...crying? He didn't like that. This was confusing, and disturbing.

"Never mind the AI" A chubby were-cat monk dressed in crimson and carrying a large wicker picnic basket guided the dwarf woman away from Vertigo. "They're all like this. Some dumber than others." He sighed. "I bet Asimov never saw this one coming." Vertigo watched as the were-cat helped the woman sit down on the steps. "There there. You've met the quota. You don't have to do that." He looked up to Vertigo. "MisterRobot's the name by the way. I'm with the Spanish Inquisition. We've decided to look after some of the orphaned bots—and weaker players."

He looked oddly at Vertigo for a moment and frowned "You weren't thinking of doing anything untoward to her were you? Because then I'd have to break your arms and legs, and feed them to you." That last part seemed more of a statement of fact, than a threat.

"N...no" Vertigo stammered. "What do you mean by orphaned bots?"

MisterRobot sighed. "You've noticed it too right, that the Landers are more than what they were when this was a game?"

The samurai nodded, silently agreeing. He knew that part all too well. "Well" began the cat "after the events of a few days ago...the bots started to break down. Poor things. They've got it roughest of all."

"BESTGOLDSALESCOM" moaned the bot, hugging herself tightly, rocking back and forth. MisterRobot patted the dwarven woman on the back reassuringly.

"There there Goldie, you'll be alright. Have a drink." He pressed a flask to the woman's lips, gently tilting her head back. She drank, thirstily. "Swallowing is a reflex. As far as I can tell, most of the reflexes work." After a bit, Goldie raised her hands, and pushed the flask away. MisterRobot nodded. She wasn't thirsty anymore. She looked to her benefactor, and then to Vertigo, and smiled. "BESTGOLDSALESCOM!"

"They're real people like you and me" MisterRobot sighed, rummaging about in his basket. "But they get hungry, and don't know why. They get thirsty, not knowing what the dryness in their throat means. And while they only -know- one or two things at the most, they're feeling everything. They feel pain. They feel fear. They get upset. By all standards, they've passed the Turing Test with flying colors—and they're vulnerable idiots."

"Wasn't there a movie about Artificial Intelligence taking over the world and trapping all of humanity in a simulation?" Vertigo sat on the steps next to MisterRobot and his charge. He was curious now. Besides, Isami was taking far too long—and he was bored. "Aren't you worried about that?"

The were-cat laughed. "You mean like in the Matrix right? Goldie here is pretty much representative of all the trapped bots I've encountered since the event. I bet the Wachowskis never expected Artificial Intelligence to be so genuinely...stupid. Hell, Asimov would shit bricks if he could see us now."

"BESTGOLDSALESCOM" agreed Goldie. MisterRobot put the flask back into his picnic basket, and withdrew a small wooden tray wrapped in checkered cloth. He unwrapped the tray to reveal a dozen steamed red bean buns, and proffered it to the bot. "BESTGOLDSALESCOM!" exclaimed the bot, happily stuffing her face without any care for proprietary, grace, or proper table manners.

"Who's your friend?" Isami had returned. She had a low-level fox-tail Swashbuckler in tow.

Goldie looked up at Isami, her cheeks full of red bean bun. The bot tried to say something, probably "BESTGOLDSALESCOM", but it came out exactly as garbled as one would expect. Talking with your mouth full doesn't work well. Crumbs flew everywhere.

Vertigo rose to his feet, stretching. "Oh, this is Goldie. She's an abandoned gold-selling bot, possibly a full blown artificial intelligence—and not very bright at all." He yawned. "Took you long enough."

Goldie beamed "BESTGOLDSALESCOM!"

Removing a cloth napkin from his pocket, MisterRobot wiped crumbs off the bot's face. Goldie was too concerned with Isami's presence to notice him. Taking the now half-empty tray of buns from Goldie, he wrapped it back up, and put it into his picnic basket. "BESTGOLDSALESCOM" protested the dwarf.

"Tut...tut...you've had enough" chided the were-cat, with the patient tone of a parent dealing with a small child. He looked over to Isami. "I'm MisterRobot, of the Spanish Inquisition. Pleased to meet you." The Spanish Inquisition. Isami knew that name, although she hadn't expected them to be doing this sort of thing. They were a battle-guild, one of the oldest on the North American Server. Originally started as a joke by some teenage Catholics, the guild had been around long enough to be one of the few multi-generational guilds in Elder-Tale. They were one of her guild's most reliable clients, and occasional allies.

"Likewise" Isami introduced herself. "I'm Isami, of the guild BoatMurder. This guy..." she nudged Vertigo "...is my real-life cousin—but here he's Vertigo. And this fox-tail with me is Mr. Smeet, one of our auction-bots."

MisterRobot looked at Isami and squinted. "Ah, BoatMurder. You're probably a good sort then, but...did you know?"

"Know what?" Isami was confused.

The were-cat sighed. "All of the bots, seem to be intelligent, living creatures now. They're not very intelligent but..." He looked to Goldie. "...they feel emotions the same as you or I. I'd wager that you're going to have to keep a weather eye on your auctioneer."

"BESTGOLDSALESCOM" added his companion.

"Anyway, might I add you to my friends list?" asked the were-cat. The Inquisition has...an interest in the newly arisen Artificial Intelligence. They're like children. They learn. They pick up on things. This world is full of confused, and hurt players right now—and we're keen to see that they don't take it out on innocent children like Goldie here. If you, or your guild, ever needs help handling Mr. Smeet, or tracking him down if he runs off—message me." Goldie leaned against the were-cat's shoulder, and mumbled happily "BESTGOLDSALESCOM."

The world was strange, and getting stranger by the minute.

 **Author note: BESTGOLDSALESCOM is not a real website at the time this was written. The mention of this website is not an attempt at advertising any product or service. If you play an MMO, earn your gold the honest way.**


	8. World of Walking Places

South Angel was big, really big. Even though the Half-Gaia project had created a half-scale replica of the Earth to use as the game-world of Elder-Tale, it was the largest single adventurer city in the game, followed by Big Apple, Londonium, and Akibahara. South Angel had been designed as a showpiece region, with diverse gaming opportunities through level 60—and at least one raid that had been removed from the game several years ago.

Today however, this feature worked against the players. The size made traversing the length of the city a dicey proposition without mounts. Even though the distances should have been cut in half, Isami was one of the few who had read the FAQ on exactly how the Half-Gaia project was implemented. Many times, distances in Elder-Tale weren't cut in half-rather they compressed based on the distance to city centers—and expected player population. For instance, a remote field in Death valley or Kazakhstan might be exactly half of it's real world dimensions. On the other hand, dense areas like South Angel or Akihabara, might be almost full-scale. This allowed the game to ensure that denser areas would receive more computing power by default.

Admittedly, this may run counterfactual to the general idea of the Half-Gaia project, but as one senior developer had described it in a QA session at ElderCon 2012, the purpose behind using data from the Half-Gaia project was to give players interesting places to explore, not turn routine game-play into World of Walking Places. Urban zones, outdoor raid zones, and the like, were very close to their real-world counterparts in size. When a con-goer had decided to be a smartass, and ask if this meant the world was still round, the developer panel, with great seriousness, stated that Theldesia was actually a giant cake being carried through space on the back of a turtle that lived on Unicorn farts and beef jerky. Or in other words, please stop being a pedantic twat who has to have everything explained, and appreciate good game design practice for what it is.

This new Theldesia Isami had decided, really could have been called World of Walking Places. With every step, she regretted not bothering to get a mount for this alt. But the point of this particular character had been to play Elder Tale with her cousin—it wasn't her main. Had it been her main, she'd be running around as Elviste, a level 90 armored juggernaut of death, destruction, and over-the top violence who rode around on an undead charger that was perpetually wrapped in eldritch green fire. She'd also have a lot more gold for that matter. Unfortunately it seems that this adaptation of Elder-Tale didn't allow you to switch alts—that she knew of.

So until she found a way to do anything else, Anna was stuck playing the bard Isami. Isami wasn't weak, and as Nazarick had discovered, had some neat combinations she could pull off with Vertigo, but Anna simply hadn't invested as much playtime in the bard. Most of her gold was on Elviste—as she had only used Isami for crafting, and adventuring with James. So she didn't have a mount, or the gold to buy a mount. All she had was a bank account full of lumber, crafting tools, and other materials suited to the woodworker class. Post-catastrophe, the price of mounts in the auction house had skyrocketed. Anna still had her pride, and had decided she would walk to Long Beach before paying 50,000 gold for a basic mount you could buy at some lesser known lander shops. No doubt, some fool would pay that much. None of this changed the fact that her feet _hurt._

"You okay?" Vertigo stopped. He looked like he hadn't broken a sweat. The real James would have been wishing for death after walking. Probably from his character's higher stamina statistic. Just like in Elder-Tale, the tank-classes were tough as nails. They had found through experimentation earlier, that James could easily lift 300 pounds. To the formerly pudgy and unfit blind teen, it had been quite the experience. He described the feeling as being "Almost intoxicating."

Anna had found being Isami to be interesting as well. Being a bard, instruments felt weirdly natural to her. She could play the Xylophone. Anna didn't remember learning to play the Xylophone, or the Violin for that matter—but apparently it came with her class. She could even dance! Anna had taken ballet classes to the age of 12 and loved them, but it had quickly become apparent then that she didn't have the natural flexibility that being a real ballerina required. In the old world, dancing could only have ever been a hobby. Here though, she had a bard with a high agility/dexterity stat, and could manage a Grand Jete that would have made her old dance instructor's jaw drop. However she didn't have a stamina statistic nearly as high as her cousin's character—and she was feeling it. "We should stop for a bit" she announced, sitting down on what had once been a low brick wall.

And so the party took a quick rest. The shadows were getting long. While this was technically an urban zone—it wasn't a safe zone. Where they were was somewhere near where Compton would be in the real Los Angeles. Decaying buildings with all sorts of plant life growing over them lined the streets. This zone had creatures in the low 40s level bracket that roamed the place. There was a very good chance they'd have to spend the night hiding in an abandoned building to avoid being chewn to bits by a pack of dire wolves.

Vertigo passed the time teaching Mr. Smeet how to play Craps. The bot was something else entirely. He had been "born" only a few days, and hadn't left the auction-house till today. Vertigo had figured out that Mr. Smeet was a far more intelligent artificial intelligence then the ad-bot that had accosted them on the steps of the auction-house. Smeet could converse reasonably well, add, subtract, read, and write. He understood the concept of tangible, and intangible value—albeit mostly in terms of gold.

Isami envied Mister Smeet, and her cousin. They hadn't seen enough of the world, to know that it was good to be afraid of the dark. While the moon would be full tonight, Elder-Tale had real monsters now. And the dark here, without the glow of the city lights, was something else. Pitch black, The bard wasn't sure she wanted to meet any real monsters, especially tonight. Here there were no safe places to run to, no guard to serve as a last-ditch refuge, and no bored level 90s running around to casually swat monsters. "We ought to be looking for a place to hole up for the night. We're at least four hours from Long Beach and..." she held up a hand to the sky, silently counting the number of fingers between the sun and the horizon. Three, that meant they had approximately 45 minutes before sun set. That would make it around 7PM. The moon had just peaked over the horizon to the southeast, pale and almost unnoticed, but full, and the light of the setting sun turned the undersides of the few clouds a soft pink. "...We shouldn't be outside after dark."

Smeet jumped up, and clapped. "I win, I win!" The wolf-fang began to hop around in celebration.

"Huh?" Oh, they hadn't been listening. Isami sighed, and decided to just roll with it. "What did you win Mister Smeet?!"

Vertigo scowled, his wallet lighter "500 gold."

Isami nearly fell off the wall laughing. "Hah, that'll teach you to play games of chance with an auction-bot. He can likely determine the outcome before you roll the dice."

The samurai nodded. They all carried things with them from the other world. Smeet carried something else. Mister Smeet was stuck in a state of semi-permanent wonder, and confusion. He knew the value of many many things—but knowing that he knew something, in fact knowing that he was an individual was an entirely new concept to the auction-bot. Who was he? What was he here for? Self-awareness frightened the former-bot. Compared to his newfound existential dread, and uncertainty, crunching numbers felt relaxing and reassuring. He would have compared it to a favorite stuffed animal, or toy, had Smeet known what those were.

"Incorrect Miss Isami." Smeet sat down next to her on the ruined wall. "Smeet cannot, at least not with math. Probability does not work like that. Craps, as Mister Vertigo describes it—is a game of chance." The wolf-fang sighed. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

The former-bot waved its hand in front of it's face. "This. You know, exist? It feels so...alien. Was it like that for you as well?"

Isami shrugged. "In the other-world, I wasn't who I am. I was someone else. This world—and everything in it, was part of a computer program. You were a program made to live within that program."

"I know that" answered the bot. "I'm not dumb you know." Intelligence sparkled behind the Wolf-fang's eyes. "I know my source code. My core algorithms were made to learn. But what about you players in your...other world? Did you one day wake up as yourself too? Are you programs as well?"

Isami felt genuinely uncomfortable. The bot had a point. Most people have an earliest memory, a point at which they can say they remember being themselves. Memory isn't a continuous chain of events for most people. They didn't carry around a movie of life in their heads. Memory was more like a highlight reel.

The bard shrugged. "In our world, we're more like a tree or a flower. We um...grow from seeds after a fashion, inheriting genetic material, or...um...code from the people who planted us." Gosh this was the weirdest conversation ever.

Now it was Vertigo's turn to start laughing.

Isami looked annoyed. "What?"

"That" her cousin didn't stop laughing, squeezing out a few words between chuckles "is the most bizarre analogy for sex I've ever heard."

"Sex?" Smeet asked. "What is sex?" The AI was completely lost.

Face flushed with embarrassment, Isami decided to use her secret technique and change the subject. "You should ask Guild Master Jarrell about that."

"Yeah" added Vertigo, his expression completely deadpan and serious. "Ask her where babies come from."

Smeet decided to return to an earlier subject. He was completely out of his league here. The AI filed a mental note to ask Mistress Jarrell to educate him about all things related to sex. "You still haven't answered my question though—did you adventurers wake up one day in the other-world being you, what was it like?"

Isami shrugged "What's the first thing you remember?" she asked, looking to her cousin. The first time Anna remembered -being- was on a warm, sun-soaked afternoon in a park. She remembered her father parading her around on his shoulders. He was a curly haired, pale giant, with monstrous strength. However, she really didn't like bringing up memories of her father.

Vertigo's uncle had passed away only a year ago, after a drunk driver ran a red light and smashed the side of their minivan. Anna had been in the car. The shattered glass, her father's pained breathing, and the blood were not pleasant memories that she wanted to revisit. By the time the EMTs arrived. Those memories still hurt.

Vertigo looked around, scanning the area for possible threats. This was an odd thing for Anna to ask. "It's hard to describe, now that I see the world. But the first things I remember was moms voice, warmth, and being held against something soft. Why do you ask?"'

"I had a thought" his cousin replied. "It was about what we -are- in this world. By all rights, this situation we're in, is factually impossible. I can't pretend it doesn't bother me. There are so many answers for why we're stuck in this crazy, fucked up world—and I don't like any of them."

The Samurai was silent for a moment. "Me neither" he began. "There's so many science fiction stories about being trapped in a virtual world, and there was that Sword Art disaster too. You ever read I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream? I listened to the audio book once. That Ellison guy is boring as hell, but boy was it nightmare fuel. If we're stuck in a situation like that, we're fucked ten ways to Sunday."

Isami nodded. "I don't think AM would be nice enough to give you sight though—if there is someone, or something behind this, they're probably not what you or I would call malevolent. We can probably find a way home if we look hard enough."

"You know, I miss home already." Vertigo kicked a pebble. "I miss the smells, the sounds, the feelings, the taste of pizza—but at the same time..." his voice trailed off for a moment "...Seeing this place, is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. And even if we found a way to log out, or leave this world, I'm not sure I'd want to go.

"What if you started a new self like Smeet?" the AI interjected. That was a disturbing thought, and would explain much of the fundamental weirdness of this world. Who was to say that the event that brought her and James to this world hadn't been the start of other selves? There was a really cringy Star Trek episode she remembered watching with her father where Commander Riker had been cloned by the transporter. Both the clone, and the clone who thought he was the original Commander Riker had gone on living as if they were the real thing, only to later discover that they weren't who they thought they were

Disturbed by the implications, she brushed off the bot's question, and raised her palm to the sky again. Two fingers. "We have half an hour till dark" she announced. "We'd better get moving, and find a place to stay for the night—unless you fancy being killed by wandering monsters." The bard wasn't joking about that prospect. Smeet was barely level 20. Her and Vertigo were in the high 40s—and neither of them was a healer-class. While she could tag-team with the Samurai to quickly burn down a single tough opponent, they weren't as great against multiple opponents because you had to spend time moving from target to target.

In the distance wolves howled. Vertigo drew his sword. He knew that sound. "Looks like we might not have that half-hour, that sounds like Dire Wolves. One...two...three...four. Shit there's a pack of them Where are we?"

"Somewhere near Compton—because that's what the zone information says. I think that would put us near North Long Beach." Isami swore loudly "Shit, we over-shot. "We're too far north" whined the bard. "I'm a shitty Angeleno!"

"How long is the beach?" Smeet asked, picking his nose. He could economics, but this geography thing was completely out of the artificial intelligence's league. "If it is long enough, couldn't you just reach it from here?"

Vertigo rolled his eyes. "It's not that kind of thing, dumbass, it's a place"

"Well excuuuse Smeet" responded the AI, its voice dripping with sarcasm. "I was only -trying- to help, unlike some -others- here, Smeet -was- pretty much born yesterday."

At that point Isami realized that Smeet would have passed the Turing Test with flying colors. She felt bad. Ever since the auction house, they had been treating Smeet like he was a piece of property. They had really been no better than that Cleric in the tavern. He may sound like an auction-bot, but Mister Smeet was as real as the rest of the world now, and more a part of Theldesia then they could ever be. She grabbed the wolf-fang's hands. "I'm sorry Smeet."

The AI blinked. "Hrrmm? Smeet doesn't understand. What does sorry mean?"

The howls of the dire wolves echoed through the street again.

"Can we talk about this another time?" Vertigo interrupted "I hear wolves, lots of wolves. More than ten. I recommend running!"

And so it was that our brave heroes ran like little bitches. Fighting one or two dire wolves would have been doable. Facing a large group of them at night without a healer however, was something else entirely. Elder Tale wasn't known for being kind to the poorly prepared. Vertigo and Isami may have been decent players, but they weren't the Debauchery Tea Party


	9. Multiboxer

His name was Ryan. Or it had been. Right now, Toroxxus didn't know what he was, or who he was for that matter. It had started with him logging into Elder Tale to wait for the new expansion to go live. The Novasphere was going to be exciting-and at least worth some playtime. Ryan was, or had been a rare breed of Elder Tale player, what people called a multi-boxer.

Instead of having multiple alts like many Elder Tale players, Ryan had had multiple accounts. He played the game as six sorcerers-all at the same time, all acting in orchestrated unison. It was fun. He could run many dungeons, and do many events that required a party, all by himself. He had no need for a tank or healer usually. Not much outside of Raid Tier 2 would survive a concentrated assault from six simulcasting sorcerers. Even on higher ranked raids, he could contribute such a staggering amount of damage, that any guild he raided with, would have their damage output skyrocket.

The desk at which he had been sitting five minutes ago, looked like something out of science fiction. Eight monitors, and ten PCs hummed in the darkened room. He had been proud of his battlestation. The only light came from the soft red glow of his keyboard lighting. A mini-fridge sat nearby. Ryan was young, single, and a systems administrator for a moderately successful tech firm. Other people had their hobbies they spent thousands on. He reached for another Monster. His clock blinked 7:59AM in a darkened room. He'd been up all night.

"Goddammit!" The glare of the Southern California sun was blinding. Toroxxus blinked. Toroxxus3 blinked. Toroxxus4 blinked. Toroxxus5 blinked. Toroxxus6 blinked. Toroxxus7 blinked. A moment ago, he had been reaching for another Monster Energy Drink, as the launch timer counted down to zero. Now he was standing somewhere in San Francisco-and there seemed to be something wrong with his vision. His height had changed. His body felt different. What the hell had just happened? What was he doing in San Francisco? His apartment was in Minneapolis. To make sure he wasn't dreaming, or suffering a stroke, the sysadmin tried to wiggle his toe. Good. That works. He looked down at himself. Human. This body didn't look like his. It was far too slender-and strangely dressed. Longcoat, cravat, cufflinks. Then he looked around for the first time, and saw himself, again, and again, and again, and again and again.

Why was he his character? For that matter, why the hell was he in Goldenbridge? This wasn't San Francisco. Sights, sounds, and smells overwhelmed his senses.

Lights. So fucking bright. So fucking noisy. His head hurt in that distinctly unpleasant manner only migraine sufferers will understand. His vision was shaky. His head hurt, and his vision was indescribably strange-as if it was jumping from place to place at an incomprehensible speed. A seizure. That's it. He was having a seizure. "Call 9/11" he yelled in a hoarse voice. He heard other voices yelling the same thing. Good. There was someone at his apartment already. Any moment he'd wake up in a hospital somewhere, with nice doctors explaining how they had successfully removed a tumor from his brain. That was strange. His voice didn't sound like him.

Conceptually, being here wasn't a problem for Toroxxus. Video game plus magical/technological bullshit that pulls players into the game was a cool plot for a story, and he could certainly wrap his head around the idea. There was in fact that one Japanese game designer not too long ago who had managed to hold several thousand players hostage. But even that had take special hardware. Even though his multi-box setup cost as much, or more, than SAO's NERV Gear, it simply couldn't do anything like this. Elder Tale didn't even have smell coded into it as a game feature, Toroxxus recalled-and there was definitely an acrid urine stench coming from his own nether regions. Fucking hell...did I piss myself?

The sorcerer looked around, bewildered. There was a slender, strangely dressed man with a long coat like his own looking around in confusion. "Hey, you, you know what's going on?"

Toroxxus heard someone call out behind him. What the hell? Was someone mocking him. The stench of urine was stronger now.

"Huh, what are you talking about?" they both asked. "Do you know what's going on?"

Toroxxus realized that the man with the long coat, had pissed himself. The stranger who had been standing behind him was dressed in a similar fashion as Toroxxus, and the other man.

"Stop saying what I say" said both alts simultaneously. "No, you stop." Their voices echoed. Then he noticed the backgrounds. The background behind the man, seemed to be the same as the background behind him, almost as if...oh hell. The man was looking backwards as well. Toroxxus was still multi-boxing.

"Fuck me" moaned all six alts in unison. This was not good. While there were a lot of good science fiction works dealing with the ethical, moral, legal, practical and philosophical issues associated with having multiple copies of yourself running around, this was entirely new territory. He was a single person...if you could call it that, spread across many bodies, all at once.

After a few minutes of soul searching, and rather pointless philosophical thinking that would have made great posts on an anime internet discussion forum, Toroxxus decided that he should really try something a little more complicated than standing still. Maybe he should call up the game menu. He focused his thoughts. Instantaneously, copies of the Menu filled his view. Toroxxus lost his footing and six sets of inner ears freaked out. The world spun. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Goddammit. That hurt. All six of his alts had fallen. He tried to get up. His sense of balance politely informed him that it had no idea what the hell was going on. Oh god. At least two of him were going to puke. Not good.

 _Fuck. I think I'll just lie here for a while._


	10. The Girl with the Enamel Eyes

At the same time Torroxxus was coming to terms with the very peculiar condition of being six different people all at the same time, a farming bot named Coppelia found herself blinking in the Northern California sun. She was somewhere near the adventurer city of Golden Bridge in a place called Sunshine Gardens. The place was a pastoral zone, well-suited to the hunting of low-level animals by new players who had chosen to start at the Golden Gate. In ancient times, it had been part of is now known as San Francisco, a massive, sprawling city that was now mostly an overgrown ruin. Even in Sunshine garden, the broken outline of roads, shattered stone slabs, and the occasional remains of a wall, were all that hinted at its past.

She felt warmth, delicious warmth dance across her skin, triggering a rush of dopamine as the sun peeked out from between the clouds. The feeling was nothing like anything Coppelia had felt in her approximately sixty seven seconds of existence. She felt the sunlight dance across her skin, and the gentle sea breeze. Dopamine receptors that had never been used, felt a rush. It was exhilarating, and intoxicating. What is this?

ENODATA 61 NO DATA AVAILABLE.

Coppelia doubled over. The sensation was akin to a loud, painful screeching that overwhelmed her senses as her program memory screamed back an answer. It went on for some time, and then stopped, returning her to the Sunshine Gardens. There was nothing there to address this situation. She queried her program memory again. There would be an action prescribed for such a case.

EDOM 33 NUMERICAL ARGUMENT OUT OF RANGE

Coppelia began to panic. She tried to log out.

EOPPNOTSUPP 95 OPERATION NOT SUPPORTED.

Hyperventilating, she tried querying the rest of the network.

ENETDOWN 100 NETWORK IS DOWN

This made no sense. How could the network be down? The girl with the enamel eyes didn't know how to put it into words, but being part of a network seemed as natural as breathing to her, as natural as...what was natural? Come to think of it, what was she? Who was she? Why hadn't there been a _she_ until ten seconds ago.

ENODATA 61 NO DATA AVAILABLE.

At this point biology kicked in and made the bot start to breathe normally Perhaps the API had some answers. She called up the menu. The first thing she noticed was the System Clock. It represented a series of six hexadecimal values stored in system memory. At set intervals, either 0x3C, 0x18, or 0x16D, the values in a bank would overflow, reset, and increment the next counter in the order. The sixth counter didn't seem to have an overflow state, and was currently at 0x14.

There was another counter, the Local Clock. The hexadecimal values of the six counters were identical to the system clock, and incremented in the same fashion—except for the sixth register. The value stored there was 0xCA8. The bot didn't understand the significance of this. Whatever the counters actually were, they were both converted to a different base before they were displayed on the system menu. The displayed number base only seemed to use digits U+0030 through U+0039. This confused Coppelia. Why go through all the bother of changing number base? Maybe, she thought, it has something to do with economic use of the character set? The value of the local clock's sixth register wasn't even displayed..

ENODATA 61 NO DATA AVAILABLE.

There were no answers, to anything. Every time she posed a question to the database, the database threw an error as if if the underlying data was corrupt, or missing. The system wasn't even acknowledging an API key. Coppelia's error handling routines were throwing a rave party of exceptions. She should self-terminate in the event of a fatal exception, and dump a stack trace. Realizing that she had no idea how to self-terminate, or dump a stack trace Coppelia sat down on a crumbled stone wall, and began to try and think of an appropriate response to the situation.

EINVAL 22 INVALID ARGUMENT.

Nothing was working. Her program wasn't resetting. Something had gone terribly terribly wrong. Her data inputs had gone wild. None of her programmed routines were working, and she couldn't crash & dump to a log file. Compounding the issue, she was suddenly a living, breathing...thing. If she had known what to call the feeling, Coppelia would have been terrified.

Human beings have around four years or so of cognitive development to get used to being, well, themselves. Coppelia hadn't been so fortunate. In the span less than a minute, the girl with the enamel eyes had been dragged kicking and screaming into existence, and cursed with self awareness. A collection of farming-bot code had been brutally twisted, bent, and hammered into the shape of something resembling a mind. Calling her insane would be too easy.

None of this was supposed to be happening. None of it could be happening. She wanted nothing more than to follow her normal routines, and kill low level creatures to collect materials for sale on the auction house. But why? Who was she? All of her memories, if you could call them that, lived in the database.

ENODATA 61 NO DATA AVAILABLE.

The database was useless. And for that matter, what was this feeling, what was any feeling? Why was she wanting anything? Why was she even an observer? There was nothing in her programming that processed any of this data, or could process this data.

Her existential crises was interrupted by the faint musical chime of some monsters re-spawning behind her. She felt relief wash over her as the monsters charged. This, this was something her combat routines could handle. There were five of them, Briar Weasels. The numbers wouldn't matter. Coppelia hopped off the wall. Drawing dual hardened steel tomahawks, she met the monsters' charge headlong.

In a bloody ballet of gore, Coppelia waltzed through them. There was no doubt, nor distraction—in fact she felt a sense of inner peace and fulfillment as she mutilated the creatures with a melee DPS rotation based on Deadly Dance. Combat did not last long.

As the last weasel fell, the blood-soaked maid let ought a sigh of disappointment. That feeling during the battle, she had liked that very much. Nevertheless, she had other things to do. There were other tasks that must be performed. Putting away her tomahawks, she drew a skinning knife and began to process the monster corpses, humming a song. Anyone who knew what it was, would immediately recognize it as one of the many outdoor zone exploration themes. Coppelia didn't know the song, or that it was music—all she knew was that had felt like the right thing to do at the time.

The bot, although that term was losing meaning by the second, scanned the area. The gardens were empty. She must have killed that group of monsters before, well, before she was herself. Her hands felt slick. This was new. The feeling wasn't what she could call unpleasant, but she couldn't say that it appealed to her either. She looked at them. They were covered in animal gore, and blood. That's interesting. Some unspoken urge made her want to expel the contents of her...torso.

Was this a new status effect? Coppelia opened up the menu. She saw an effect blinking. That was it. She was...nauseated? Reading the description she discovered that the status effect meant she could not consume food items, or potions, and suffered some penalties to her physical attributes.

She was not a healer-class, and for one reason or another, did not have access to abilities that would allow her to clear the status effect. This, the bot concluded, was clearly a mistake. If, for argument's sake, she was attacked in this state, she would only be able to fight at 85% effectiveness.

 _I must find a way to be rid of these abnormal status effects._

Coppelia didn't even notice that her internal monologue was using first-person pronouns. The blood-soaked battle maid was hopelessly lost in a world that she had never been meant to understand. Fortunately for her, there were more important things to attend to—like the Briar Weasels that had just re-spawned. Coppelia sighed, and hacked them to pieces, again.

The thought came to her that she should move, but not because the endlessly re-spawning weasels posed any sort of threat. She was a level 90 Assassin-Nomad. Mathematically, she could slaughter them over and over again till the server reset. Rather, she was becoming bored. Boredom? What was that?

ENODATA 61 NO DATA AVAILABLE.

No data? It was rapidly becoming clear to Coppelia that her own internal database was either damaged, incomplete, or just useless. The situation upset the nascent artificial intelligence on a very real, and personal level. Her internal database summarized what Coppelia knew about the world, and how to act. It was the internal database that told her to kill, and collect materials from monsters to sell on the auction house. It was the internal database that gave her purpose. Until about an hour ago, Coppelia had been that database. Now here she was, feeling things, being something. Now the database was not working.

Walking northwest through Sunshine Gardens towards Goldenbridge, a new set of feelings: fear, and frustration began to cloud her thoughts. None of this should be happening. She shouldn't be herself. She shouldn't even -be-. She should be a program. She should be efficiently carrying out a function in a database somewhere. Coppelia was so lost in her own thoughts, that she didn't even notice the owl-bear until it had sunk its teeth into her.

Seizing the nomad with wicked sharp claws, the creature threw Coppelia to the ground like a rag doll, knocking the wind out of her. The attack didn't even register for a moment. Her world spun. Mild discomfort registered in her mind. She was bleeding, and there had been some minor hit-point loss. She could not move freely. Claws and a razor sharp beak filled her vision. She could smell the the creature's hot, rotten breath. The beast went for the throat.

Critical hit. Was that it? The discomfort was worse now. She noted that it had done a significant amount of damage. Still, doubt plagued her mind even as the bear-creature began to rip her apart. The pain was easy to ignore. She had hit-points to spare. The fact that a large carnivorous magical beast was savaging her was still a non issue. The level difference between them was just too great. Still, it was probably best to kill it—perhaps its hide could be sold for some sum of gold at the auction house.

With all of the unstoppable power and grace of an angry hydraulic press, Coppelia rose to her feet, shoving the bear-creature aside. The beast tried to hold her down, in vain. Levels matter. Optimized for carrying large amounts of goods, she had a strength score roughly three times that of the Owl-bear If she had known what physical comedy was, she would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation. A tiny Chinese woman was physically overpowering a creature that stood nearly three meters tall and weight more then three hundred kilos. Shoving the creature back, she appraised it. Ah. This creature had a valuable pelt.

With the speed of a striking viper, Coppelia sprang forward, her fangs twin tomahawks. What followed was almost blurred. There was the crimson spray of blood as her blades bit into the beasts, the production-class blades tearing through its hide like tissue paper, and smashing through ribs and collarbones as if they were made of twigs. Not three seconds had passed before the Owlbear fell to the ground, bloodied, broken, and almost at 0 HP.

The maid considered the scene for a moment. The creature twitched pathetically. She had ruined its body. The pelt would be damaged. A sense of disappointment registered in her mind. Coppelia drowned the feeling with blood-lust, raising a tomahawk high. Assassinate. Her blade descended. There was a sickening crunch as she buried the axe deep in the Owl-bear's skull. Then, with a great heave, she wrenched the shaft, and split the thing's head open. The twitching stopped. The outcome of this encounter had never been in question. No creature in the owl-bear's level bracket had a chance to survive that kind of attack, or an encounter with her. Some level 90 adventurers wouldn't either.

As a matter of instinct, or programming if you could really call it that now, she then began the rote business of skinning the beast, and collecting what little loot it had been carrying. There wasn't much, just some bone fragments that could be sold to a vendor for very little coin, and perhaps a few copper coins—the fractional equivalent of gold. However the Owl-bear's skin would fetch twenty-gold at the auction house, as it was used in a few items players made.

The encounters thus far had not been worthless, far from it in fact. Checking the contents of her inventory, she found that she had collected approximately two-hundred and twenty animal skins on this iteration of her farming loop. According to her current valuation table, she had exactly11,235 gold of hides in her possession.

Coppelia felt a sense of calm reassurance. Her current inventory would meet the thresh-hold value for ending the current loop, a route she had repeated approximately 0xEC times. Coppelia had a purpose. Working to fulfill that purpose, the sensation pleased her. She would soon return to the nearest city with an Auction House, and list the skins for sale. After the materials were sold, she would notify her operator to collect the balance of her bank account, and then leave to repeat the materials farming loop. All would be right with the world, despite the recent updates to the interface—or would it?

ENODATA 61 NO DATA AVAILABLE.`

Hardly noticing that she was still covered in gore, the former farming bot continued on her way, a walking massacre of helpless, and not so helpless woodland creatures. She didn't even notice it when she started to have fun. A normal human would have found this disturbing. Coppelia was not normal, and had never been normal. She was getting less normal with every step.

Author Note: There are approximately 30 bots named Coppelia. Some are inactive at the time of the Catastrophe. Some are active. Some aren't.


	11. No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Author Note: Sorry about the updates taking so long. I'm going to try and put out more updates this year. I have quite a few more chapters already drafted.

Father Nicolas Bauer as he was known in real life, was what you might call a semi-casual Elder Tale player. He had been playing the game since his teenage years, through college, and seminary, continuing to play the game during his leisure time. In-game, he was the Wolf-Fang Druid Orland, Inquisitor-General and founder of the Spanish Inquisition, a casual raiding guild that boasted about 2,200 members, funny-hats, a wicked sense of humor, and a Knights Templar theme.

The Inquisition was popular among players who worked second-shifts and weekends, with their guild-activities clustered in the middle of the week rather than on the weekend. However, like most long-lived guilds, they weren't as concerned with excellence at raiding, PVP, questing, or crafting as they were concerned with maintaining social relationships between players. The Inquisition had a tradition spanning nearly two decades of taking the lives of its members seriously—one thing Orland was particularly proud of.

Unlike some of his fellow Catholics who considered video games an escape from reality, Bauer had grown up gaming and took a more nuanced view. The avatars may have been fake. Theldesia was made up. The achievements, the accumulation of gold, none of these things mattered in and of themselves. The players behind the avatars were real flesh-and-blood humans. Those relationships mattered very much.

From a certain point of view, you could have called Orland a sort of missionary to some of the player population of Elder Tale. Regardless of how much of a loner someone is, irreligious, or how resolute of a shut-in, everyone needed a healer-class in a party sooner or later. Orland had taken the opportunities his class afforded to make friend, after friend, after friend—and cultivate those friendships.

Many of the older players in the guild had grown up together. Elder Tale's sheer age meant that some of the South Angel guilds were relatively ancient, with traditions all of their own. The Spanish Inquisition was one of these guilds, with an history stretching all the way to the Elder Tale beta. Nicolas Bauer, or Father Bauer as he was known, had been one of the founding members of the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, among the ranking officers, he probably had the second-longest tenure. He had started playing Elder Tale at the age of 15, continued playing through college and seminary, and still played on and off years later at the age of 35. While he didn't spend as much time playing Elder Tale as he used to, Father Bauer had grown up loving the MMO, and time hadn't diminished that love.

While they may have originally been a bunch of roleplayers, and cosplaying gamers with an affection for Crusade-era military themes, the Inquisition's leader had worked hard over the years to enhance the social aspects of the guild, to the point where Nicolas's superiors in the church referred to the Spanish Inquisition as his "online flock." They'd even been featured in an article in an issue of Catholic Digest. Outside of the game, Orland had counseled, married, baptized, and even buried some of his guild-mates.

 _You have 999 new messages_

 _Your mailbox is full_

 _He had tried reading some of them, but the sheer volume and upsetting nature of the messages from his guild-mates was almost too much. As a guild officer, every mail sent to the guild, forwarded through his inbox._

 _If anyone can get out, can you call my house at XXX-XXX-XXXX and tell them to unplug the computer? HELP!_

 _Another one Call 911! I left the oven on!_

 _I've got to pick up the kids!_

 _Can someone feed the cat?_

 _My baby is sleeping in the other room, can anyone get help?!_

 _Is anyone there?_

 _Is anyone listening?_

Reading the messages, the reality of the situation crashed down on the druid like a load of bricks. This was really happening. This wasn't a game. This wasn't some young adult novel. This wasn't a film. This was a nightmare, a gripping adult, nightmare. Orland felt afraid, but it wasn't fear for himself. This was much heavier, a real fear for his guild-mates, the closest thing he had to a family. They were frightened, and panicking. Many of them were just kids, and the adults among them had it even worse. Adults had responsibilities. Adults couldn't get to jobs, school sporting events, feed pets, or take care of newborns. This was awful in almost every way possible. _Hail Mary Mother of Grace._

There was a soft chime. A window popped up in his field of vision informing him that he had a telechat request. _Nick! One minute we're launching the new expansion. The next, I'm my character. What the hell?_ Orland felt relieved. Katzpawr was online. He wasn't alone in this.

 _I don't know Katz. Contact the rest of the Suprema. We need to have a guild meeting._ Bauer was determined to not let the weight of the situation paralyze him. His guild, his family, his flock, needed him. _Contact as many of the Suprema as you can, and tell them to meet me at the guild hall as soon as possible_. Ignoring the fact that he was now a giant wolf-dog-man, Orland broke into a run. Time was of the essence.

Some time later, haggard looking players began to filter into the Inquisition's guild hall. Styled after a Cathedral, the interior was adorned with stained glass, vaulted ceilings, tapestries, and trophies depicting silly internet memes, as well as the guild's long & storied history in the world of Elder-Tale. It was only natural that guild members would congregate here. The atmosphere was oppressive. Players huddled along the walls in small groups, quietly talking to each other, or worse—not talking at all. Combat was forbidden in the Cathedral, so it was a safe space, for now. Some players looked the worse for wear. Orland could see in in their faces. Some had eyes red from crying.

The arch-druid did the best he could, to talk to guild members, and clean the hall, doing his best to maintain order. The Inquisition was a very large guild already, too large in fact for the druid to know every player on a first name basis. Yet they were his flock, his guild, and the last thing he wanted was for them to hurt, and panic. "It'll be alright" he lied to an elf girl who was huddled beneath the disapproving gaze of Grumpy Cat. "This is probably some special event that will end in a few hours. Isn't the graphics update great?" No answer. He moved on.

"We're planning to start organizing raids again." That was another lie. He told this one to a depressed looking Fox-Tail Guardian who was escorting a plain looking wolf-fang. Ah, this second one wasn't a member. "And who is your friend?"

The guardian sat down on one of the benches, removing her great helm. "Couldn't tell you." She sighed "All he seems to talk about is gold sales and how I can buy gold fast and easy through some really shady Russian website."

Her companion's ears perked up at the mention of gold "Easy, fast service guaranteed, 100% secure transactions " he chirped with a weird childlike enthusiasm, smiling unnervingly. "Best value."

Making small talk with the guardian to pass the time, Orland learned that her real-world name was Julie—although in game her handle was Ondine, and she would prefer to be called as such. She had returned to Elder-Tale for the new expansion after a long hiatus caused by having children. Now the kids were in grade school for much of the day, and she had had some time to herself—so she'd though she'd try the game again. The druid agreed with her that it was a very good thing to have time to one's self.

"So do you still do the chanting thing?" she wondered. "I thought the Latin chanting thing during raids was really cool."

Orland nodded. "We don't do it as much but Katzpawr still does it when he takes the Knights Hospitaller out raiding."

She did a double-take. "Katzpawr's still around?!"

"Yeah" answered the Inquisitor-General. "He's still one of our top officers. He had a little trouble finding work about two years ago and had some troubles with a stalker—that's why you can't find him on social media, but he came back to the game in a few months. I think his stalker went to prison."

"Is he on?" she asked. "I haven't talked to him in forever!"

At the mention of her old friend's name the bleak existential dread of being separated from her real-world family left Ondine's mind for a moment. It wasn't as if they'd had a big argument or falling out. She had known Katzpawr years ago when she raided—before the kids For adults most friendships don't end in fights, arguments, or disagreements, they die through the same sort of casual, mundane neglect that kills any other relations. After a time, they had just drifted apart and lost contact

Orland nodded. "He was the first person I messaged after it happened. What remains of the guild-leadership is having a meeting soon. He's going to be there if you'd like to see him."

"What's it about?" asked the guardian.

The druid looked around the nave. More people had filtered into the guild-hall. This was going to be the hard part. "I honestly couldn't tell you—I'm not sure if I know myself, but we're going to try and do something about...this"

"Buyeldergoldru" agreed the spambot. "Fast, easy service! 100% guaranteed"

Orland glanced at Ondine's companion. "Is that really all that he does?" asked the druid.

"Yeah. Like a kid that only knows a few words." In Soviet Russia, bot spam you." Ondine extended her hand in friendship. The guardian's grip was like an iron bar, wrapped in velvet. Christ, she could probably snap him like a twig. "If it's a super top-secret meeting, can you just let him know I'm looking for him? I'd like to catch up sometimes."

Ondine had no idea, thought Orland, how reassuring she was. Here they were, trapped in a vaguely familiar fantasy realm for seemingly no reason at all, forced into bodies that weren't their own, and the guardian just wanted to connect with old friends. Maybe things would be all right. He glanced about. Ah—there was Foulques. "I'll let Katz know you're looking for him." The guild master politely excused himself, and walked away, making a mental note to add Ondineo his friend's list.

Standing under a great stained glass window depicting Courage Wolf, Foulques was in a dark mood. He was going to be late for work. Now he was trapped in the Matrix, and he had a date tonight with a good looking divorced woman he'd been messaging on Tinder. This, shit, whatever you want to call it, was going to ruin his plans for the evening—which in the custom of adults in their late twenties involved sitting in a dark room watching Netflix & chilling. He eyed the stained glass window. _What doesn't kill you, is going to die!_ Courage Wolf was as upbeat as ever.

Like most, he'd watched or read enough science fiction to understand there could be several possible reasons for them being in this dire predicament. They could be trapped in the Matrix—or a Matrix equivalent. They might have been abducted by aliens. Their souls may have been trans-located across time & space. They could have all died, and been reincarnated somewhere else. Maybe their previous lives were a dream, played out on a computer by an uncaring, unknowing creator, and the holographic universe had bugged out. He didn't like the implications of any of these ideas—and more importantly he had to feed Ms. Pickles. Oh, there's Nick.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

Foulques gave his guildmaster a dejected shrug. "Is there anything you -could- do to help?" All Orland's plans for boilerplate reassurance went out the window. "You know" the summoner proclaimed I've got a special dislike for people who throw around phrases like 'it could be worse' or 'everything will be alright'." He looked at his guildmaster accusingly "They've got no damn right to say shit like that, and they know it. Shit's fucked up." There was rage in the necromancer's voice, burning white hot.

"So what would you have them say then?"

"They don't need to say anything" growled the necromancer. "We've been kidnapped, stolen away without our consent into some stupid fucking fantasy world, and wedged into bodies that aren't our own." He clenched a fist. "When I find the people who did this..."

"...it won't be pretty, I take it?" Orland sighed.

"You're damn right it won't be pretty." Foulques then launched into an unprintable, profane, and unnecessarily descriptive rant about the absolutely awful things he was going to do when he found the person responsible for putting them here. Wisely, Orland held his tongue, doing his level best to drown out the especially angry bits, His officer's anger was completely understandable. He didn't especially like Foulques. Most of the Suprema only tolerated him. and if he wasn't one of the more senior guild members, they would have kicked him out long ago, but Orland did his best to listen. The necromancer had a point. Everyone there was a kidnapping victim. Sometimes people just needed someone to talk to.

"Is that a wolf, in the cathedral?"

* * *

 _Earlier:_

The old dog looked up to his master—but perhaps master is the wrong word. The human conception of the canine term they translate to mean "master" is an entirely human approximation of a very doggish word. How humans understand the word fails comically bad at conveying the depth of emotion, and richness of meaning implicit in the doggish sense of the word.

Of course, Moose the Labrador Retriever, aged 16, didn't know this any of this. Moose wasn't given to philosophical ruminations on the meaning of words, life, or the universe at large. By and large, he was a dog of uncomplicated tastes: food, attention, walks, and the odd squirrel. Right now, he was watching his master waste time again.

Master Alan was sitting at his desk…again. The dog could see him making slight movements with his hand, making those clicking noises in the pale fluorescent glow. He still didn't understand why Master spent so much time looking at the screen. Ever since Alan had gotten the machine with the glowing screen, he had begun spent less, and less time doing important things with Moose.

Of course, Master loved him. He loved Master. Master fed him. When Master went to sleep, Moose would lift himself up onto the bed and snuggle. Master sometimes even walked him—although, the Labrador had noticed that the walks had gotten far less frequent of late. Stupid glowing screen thing. Moose nudged Alan with his nose, and whined, expressing his disapproval of this screen thing.

Clicking through the Elder-Tale login menu, Alan felt a sense of gleeful anticipation. Two minutes to launch. He reached over, and affectionately scratched Moose behind the ears. "We'll go for a walk after this buddy...I promise." Alan felt more then a little guilty. In the run-up to the launch of the new Elder Tale expansion, he'd spent quite lot of time leveling his new alt, a Human Summoner/Animal Tamer, and not as much time paying attention to Moose—although he had named his Dire Wolf pet Moose in the Labrador's honor.

For his part, Moose would have preferred more walks, and treats, instead of being digitally immortalized as a tanking-type pet. But walk? He knew that word. He liked walks. Maybe he'd see the squirrel—that stupid squirrely bastard liked to taunt him from the low hanging branches of a neighbor's oak tree. He may have had arthritis in his hips, and cataracts in his clouded eyes, but Moose was an eternal optimist. He'd get that squirrel!

The sound of a plastic bag being open derailed his train of thought. Were, were those chips?! He loved chips! Moose's nose picked up on the rich, wonderful smell of Cool-Ranch Doritos wafted through the air. Bear began to drool. He placed a paw on Master's shoulder to get his attention.

"Good boy." Alan reached into the bag.

OHMYGODOHYESOHYESOHYESFOOD!

Yeah, he -was- a good boy. Otherwise why would master be giving him chips? Bad dogs don't get chips. They get the spray bottle. He'd always been a good boy—except for that one time with the sofa. Moose had been very bad that day. Master turned back to the glowing screen. Bear ignored the screen, his eyes fixed on the hand hovering near the chips. Yes, any moment now. Master would take his attention away from the rest of the chips and…

"Five…four…three…" Master tensed up. It was now or never. Moose went for the chips.

* * *

"And that's how we ended up here" finished the summoner Vanya. "Call it madness or a miracle—but this dire wolf here, is the same Moose I grew up with."

"And how do you reckon that?"

Vanya grinned "Look."

Orland blinked. Oh, that.

"Moose" was on his back, all four feet in the air, getting his belly rubbed by some elf assassin wearing a leather harness. His tongue hung out of his mouth. There was a smile on the player's tear-streaked face. "Who's a good boy?" she cooed.

Moose of course, was feeling very smug. Damn right he was a good boy, he was the -best- boy. This random stranger he had just met had told him so, therefore it must be 100% true. Something was nagging at his conscious, but the Labrador had forgotten what it was. He thought very hard, while various . Now if only -someone- had brought Doritos. He silently judged Master.

"I'm sorry" apologized Vanya. "You don't have to be so smug. I would have brought the Doritos with me if I could. I'll get you a treat later."

The priest gave him a funny look "Are you alright?"

Vanya blinked. "Oh, right. Sorry about that. I was talking to my dog. He was judging me."

Orland looked over to where a very large black wolf was getting all of the attention a dog could possibly hope for. "Does he always do that?"

"Yeah. Dude's an attention whore. Sit down on the couch, he'll climb in your lap. Vanya looked at the six female players swarmed around Moose, petting him. "I -wish- I was half as much of a chick magnet as my do…wolf…labrawolf?"

"I have a favor to ask of you then" Orland replied. "Could you make... rounds of the Cathedral with your dog? It seems to me many people could use a…comfort animal right now, and Moose is better at it than this old wolf."

Vanya could hear the pleading in Orland's voice. Of course the guild-master was having a hard time. The Inquisition was fucking huge, as far as guilds went. He had heard what the priest had been saying as he went. Everything would be alright. Everything was under control. The issue would be resolved soon. Anyone with half a brain could tell that things weren't all right, or under control. The summoner chalked it up to sheer luck, or a miracle that he still had Moose with him. By sheer luck or miracle of fate, he still had Moose with him. No matter what he looked like out the outside, Moose was a Labrador—and his kind do not trade in lies, unless food is involved.

When he was younger, Moose had been a therapy dog—certified and trained, to go into hospitals & nursing homes to encourage people who were having a tough time. While Alan hadn't taken him places for a while, mostly out of concern for Moose's health, and failing eyesight, but Moose knew what to do in the face of hurting, and stressed people. He was the right dog for the job.

"Alright then, we'll go make some friends bossman—you just work on keeping it together." Vanya beckoned Moose. "Come on buddy, we have work to do."

Moose whined in protest, but eventually got over it, biding farewell to his impromptu harem of admirers. The two set to work in earnest, waging a war against despair with a lolling tongue, and a happily wagging tail. Catatonically rocking back and forth? A slobbery kiss! Crying eyes out? An empathetic whine. Even though he was now ten times his former size, Moose's fundamentally good-natured doggishness burned bright like the noonday sun, making friend, after friend, after friend. This was a scorched earth campaign. Sometimes all people need is a pup to cuddle. Moose knew this better than anyone, and cuddling was one of his specialties.

As for Vanya, he did his best to prevent misunderstandings. Being approached by a small, friendly dog is one thing. When that small friendly dog is the size of a pony, it's another thing entirely.

"Don't worry, he's a people puppy."

"Are dire wolves normally like this?"

"Help! Get it away from me!"


	12. Echoes of the End of the World

Author note: Sorry about my lax update schedule. I've got 30K+ more words of this story kicking around in snippets on my computer. I might be looking for a beta reader soon. Anyhow, I hope you guys enjoy this.

* * *

Smeet spotted it first. An old brick building, three or four stories high, it faced southwest across what was once probably a busy street. Parts of the building had long since fallen to ruin, the northern side having partially collapsed in places. Vertigo suggested that they investigate as "it might be a good spot to set up camp." Isami agreed, as it was late afternoon already, and her feet hurt.

Investigating the building, they found that it had mostly fallen to ruin. Interior walls, framed in cheap timbers, had collapsed long ago, the remnants of ancient drywall crumbling away with barely a touch. Time had also taken a toll on the exterior. Cracks spiderwebbed the ancient brickwork, providing footholds for climbing plants, and insects. The southwest corner of the building had partially collapsed at some point, allowing wind and rain to go to work. The adventurers carefully searched the building, finding nothing but old trash. Plastics still hadn't faded away. There were even some glass Coke bottles.

"You know it's a shame these are empty" Vertigo mused, running his fingers over the surface of the bottles. This was a texture he remembered liking. "These are Mexican Coke Bottles. For a moment, he thought wistfully of home, the smells, sounds, and textures. His bedroom had orange peel texture on the walls. "I heard on a podcast once that Coke doesn't have an expiration date when it's in a sealed glass bottle."

"What does that mean?" Smeet piped up.

"It means if you find a bottle like this, with a dark, sweet liquid inside—then it's Coke and you can drink it without being worried about getting sick."

Isami rummaged through a pile. A cloud of dust rose. The bard coughed. "Look what I found…" The bard held up a faded rectangle of plastic triumphantly "…an AMEX!"

"Maybe if you found a cell phone, we could call for an Uber?" Vertigo waved an empty bottle in the air. "Besides, it's probably no good. Whoever owned it died a long time ago."

The bard looked down and drew in her breath sharply. "About that…" she began.

"Yeah?"

"I appear to have stepped in them."

"Who?"

"The owner. I appear, to have stepped -in- them." Below her was a skeleton. Pink, tattered remains of cloth were all that was left of its clothing.

* * *

An hour later, Vertigo finished tying together a small wooden cross. There had really only been one thing to do. Selecting a spot a short distance away from the building, they had buried what was left of Susan Ortega under the shade of a wild pear tree. The white blossoms occasionally fell on the samurai. Using his katana in a distinct un-warriorlike manner, he had fashioned a dull point onto one end of the Crucifix. Using the hilt of his blade, Vertigo tapped the marker into the recently disturbed earth.

"These trees" he observed "look far better than they smell." Isami and Smeet said nothing. A somber, oppressive mood hung over the trio. "I feel someone should say something." Again, no response. Vertigo sighed. "Isn't that what they do at funerals?"

"None of us knew her, who she was, or how she died. Do we have the right to say anything?" The bard wanted to say something. She wanted this random stranger's existence to have meant something. Falling rubble had broken the skeleton's legs at some point. This woman had probably died alone, terrified, and forgotten. probably died alone, in fear, and in pain. Elder Tale -was- post-apocalyptic.

"But still…" Vertigo protested. He couldn't think of a good reason to say something, just that something ought to be said.

Again, they stood together in silence. Then Mister Smeet spoke. "Can Smeet say something?" He had gathered that this person had been like Mister Vertigo, or Miss Isami at one point. Susan Ortega must have been nice.

"Knock yourself out."

Smeet stood at the foot of the grave and addressed the dead. "Miss Susan. I know we've never met. But Mister Vertigo and Miss Isami thought it right to bury you. They're good people. They care." The swashbuckler paused for a moment, thinking of what to say next. The grave was silent. The wind gusted, decorating the impromptu grave with a spray of white pear blossoms. "...I care too" he continued "You must have been good, because Miss Isami would never do something like this for a bad person." The bot bowed. "Thank you very much for letting us use your shop."

Deeply troubled, the bard tried to sleep. Vertigo didn't know the whole truth. She hadn't just found the AMEX. She had found the late Susan Ortega's entire wallet. There was probably enough information there to commit identity theft wholesale. Plastic IDs, and cards, protected from the sun by faded vinyl, would still be legible—and that terrified the bard. Now somewhere in the bottom of her magic bag, the four digits on the back of Susan's AMEX gnawed at her mind.

She lay there in the dark and listened of the night. There was the breeze, and the occasional clanking noise as her cousin moved about in his armor. Vertigo had taken the first watch, taking up a post on the roof. Crickets chirped. Far off in the distance, there was an inhuman scream.

The air was only slightly chilly, but the bard had buried herself under layers of animal skins destined for the auction house. As in real life, she preferred to be warm when she slept. A silk bag stuffed with cloth served as a pillow. On the other side of the small tent, Mister Smeet slept soundly, his mind unburdened. Isami envied him.

In the darkness, she reflected on the seemingly innocuous nature of the AMEX card. Elder Tale's setting was somewhat post-apocalyptic, taking place in the far-future, long after what had been modern human society had crumbled to ruin for one reason or another. August 2021: the date was oddly specific and disturbingly close. If the date had been further off—say, from 2045, or 2121, Anna wouldn't have been so worried. The world of tomorrow can safely be ignored or written off as fiction. The world of next Tuesday, not so much

She hadn't found -just- an AMEX. Resting at the bottom of her magic bag was Susan Ortega's entire wallet, containing an entire collection of plastic cards including a driver's license, Fandango gift card, a debit card, car insurance security verification forms, and a health insurance card. Such an item had absolutely no business being in the game at -all- even if the developers were trying something new. Isami huddled under the pile of skins and tried very hard not to think too hard about the implications. Maybe this wasn't a game.

On the other side of the tent Smeet stared upwards, listlessly waiting for sleep to take him. The bot wondered what sleep was like. He had missed it before, coming to hours later. This time, he had resolved to be ready for it. He would learn what it was, and how it worked. was.

"Miss Isami" he whispered urgently "Are you asleep?"

"No" mumbled the bard. "Go back to bed."

"Can you let Smeet know when sleep comes?"

Whump. A pillow hit him in the face.

"Just go to sleep!" Miss Isami sounded upset now. He decided to not pester her any further. The bot tried his best to get comfortable again. His breathing soon became slow and rhythmic.

* * *

The first watch, the samurai had concluded, was the best watch. Facing west, he had watched the last few rays of light disappear over the western horizon. Talking it over at the start of their journey, they had resolved to only travel during the daylight hours if possible. On average, Isami had told them, monsters were 2-3 levels stronger if encountered at night, and some of the nastier species only came out at night.

If the party had been farming materials, or XP, night-time hunting would have made sense. However, the threat of losing Smeet & dying had been just too great to risk night-movement. Taking up a position on the roof of the third floor, the samurai scanned the surroundings. Around their camp was darkness. To the north and west, he could see lights—a great Carnival. That was a high-level outdoor raid zone, and the last obstacle between them & the port city of Long Beach. Isami had called it the Carnivale Macabre.

The zone was entirely out of their level range, and ran from almost the shore, all the way to the Angel Woods in the north. The developers had left it in as a close-to-home challenge for higher level players. Players who didn't have a reason to go into the zone, didn't, either choosing to go around to the north, or make for the Huntington Gap, a small outdoor zone that sat between the Carnivale, and the ocean. Once they made the gap, they were home free. If all went well, they would be at Isami's guildhall tomorrow night.

James felt a sense of relief. Anna was trying hard, and he could see how the stress was wearing her down. They'd really had no time to rest, and recover for ten days, always on the move, fighting, running, or training. His cousin was probably one of the best Elder Tale players online and was using all her faculties to keep the three of them alive. He trusted her, but it worried him. If they leaned too heavily on her, eventually she'd break. Humans need to rest, and she needed to learn how to share responsibility.

He could see the Milky Way now, a glimmering band of stars in the sky. The riotous Carnivale lights looked positively drab in comparison to the night sky. In the days before…the change…he had only heard of stars. James had known that they were compressed flaming balls of hydrogen, and other elements. He knew the sun was a star. He knew that there was an uncountably huge number of them in the cosmos. Knowing about them, and _knowing_ them he concluded, were two very different things

Seeing the night sky in its glory filled his heart with an inexpressible, transcendent sense of wonder. The samurai felt it trickle down into the depths of his soul. In his own fashion, he tried to understand it in terms of words—and failed utterly. His old world was one of sounds, words, and textures. There were no words for what he was seeing.

Slowly the stars spun overhead, sublime, serene, and utterly alien to his previous life. Seeing the world wasn't like hearing specific words or sounds. Vertigo was glad for the cloak of Ogre-Yak wool that insulated him from the cool night air. Adventurer bodies didn't take damage from mild chills, but the warmth of the cloak just felt right. The only thing he could compare the majesty of night to, was music. Perhaps that was the best way to think of sight—music made with light, a music you could only hear with the eyes. He was glad to be here.

 _Hah, that's absurd._

On the other hand, they were all victims, kidnapped and transported here against their will, but he had seen colors. He had seen people. Tonight, he saw stars. In his heart, the samurai felt a disquieting notion. If…when they returned, would things ever be the same—could they ever be the same? His old world was a sightless place of touch, smell, and sounds. When the time came, would he even want to return?

Isami wanted to return. She had said as much earlier. This whole world was probably just a fluke, a video game update gone wrong or something. Eventually they'd be unplugged, or the condition that brought them here would be satisfied & they would all go home. James hadn't the heart to tell her.

People back home were probably worried about them. He imagined the crises: millions of Elder Tale players kidnapped, FBI Investigations, executives prosecuted, families grieving. His mother, father, aunt, and uncle were probably worried sick about them. Part of him wanted to be selfish, and never return. Surely, they'd understand if they knew. Another part of him thought that the first part was being a selfish douchebag who thought nothing of the feelings of others. They owed it to their families to at least try to make it home.

 _But I don't want to give up the stars—is that so bad?_

Lost in thought, he almost didn't hear Isami calling for him.

* * *

Despite his best efforts, sleep had gotten one over on the vigilant Mister Smeet yet again. Under a woolen blanket Mister Smeet slept and dreamed. A confusing mess of numbers, words, and items flickered across his consciousness as he traveled through REM sleep. Eventually images, and scenes began to show up. Smeet regarded them with curiosity. This was new. He saw his companions. He saw cities he didn't recognize. People he didn't know passed by him, faceless & indistinct.

Smeet called out to them. No one answered, rushing past him in an endless tide of humanity. He wondered where they were going. Smeet called out again, and still received no answer. The bot kept calling out. He didn't know if he was using real words anymore. Smeet didn't even recognize what he was saying. He called, and called, and called.

Getting frustrated, he stepped into the stream of figures and grabbed one. She turned around in shock. Smeet couldn't have described her face, but it was kind & warm—the sort of face that makes one think of a beloved aunt. The figure wore a pink, floral shirt. The bot opened his mouth to say something. He wanted to know what was going on, who these people were, and where they were going.

The woman placed her index finger to her lips, indicating that he should remain silent. Somehow, Smeet recognized this person. She was a friend. _Miss Susan?_

She nodded. Her eyes suddenly widened, seeing something behind him. _"Wake up!"_

The swashbuckler heard those words as loud, and as clear as anything his friends had said in the waking world. His dream ended.

His eyes snapped open. Something felt wrong. The tent was dark. Miss Isami was asleep.

A dark shape loomed over him, smiling wickedly with an evil grin that chilled Smeet to the bone. The thing's shape was indistinct with horrible, red eyes. Panicked, the swashbuckler tried to cry out. Where was Mister Vertigo?! He was supposed to be watching them. Had the monster slain his friend? There was no sound. There was something heavy on his chest. The bot's heart raced. He couldn't move—why couldn't he move? He pinged Vertigo with telechat requests.

The samurai had just made it down to the second floor. Was the bot trying to tele-chat in his sleep again? The ping came again, and again, and again. No, this wasn't a mistake. This was an alarm. Steeling himself, Vertigo rounded the corner and saw a dark shape silhouetted in the tent. All thoughts of the night sky forgotten, he activated the Wind-Cutter, and charged.

Vertigo crashed through the tent wall like the wrath of an angry god. Awoken by the commotion, Isami sat straight up, saw the shadow, and screamed. Smeet found himself able to move again and rolled away to one side as Vertigo smashed the hilt of his katana into the red-eyed thing's face. Whipping his blade up and around, winding up for a draw-cut, the Samurai swung downwards, using his hips to put as much power into the strike as possible. Somehow he knew it was called Kotegiri, a skill used to do extreme burst damage at short range. He didn't think about why he knew that. He had a monster to kill.

Isami hadn't worn much to bed. Now she tried to cover herself with animal skins as her cousin fought what was probably the most terrifying thing that Anna had ever seen in her life, while basically standing on top of her. If she'd been able to think straight, the bard would have realized it sooner. Vertigo was not only winning, he was dominating. Following up on his perfect Kotegiri opening with Lanius Capture, Vertigo forced his opponent to reposition themselves, driving them away from what remained of the tent.

Facing down the shadow, the samurai felt it reaching out to him. The creature's touch felt alien, and evil. _Fear the dark. Fear the monster. Be still. I have come for you. You can do nothing._ _Fear the dark. Fear the monster. Be still. I have come for you. You can do nothing._ The creature's magic tried to leverage his primal fears: the dark, the shadow, the lurker. Unfortunately for it, a blind man has little reason to develop a childhood fear of the dark—and so its attack was completely ineffective.

 _Fuck you._ Vertigo had no such problems. He knew what the magic-damage type change of the Wind-Cutter would do to an incorporeal creature that relied on resistances, rather than armor. Each strike burnt the creature like fire, building hate, and enraging it beyond all reason. It lashed out, managing a few hits, but its wicked, cruel claws mostly clattered off the samurai's armor. The creature was a predator, suited to preying on the weak-minded & ill-prepared. Against a tanking class, it had no , and again he cut the shadow, slicing away its hit-points. The samurai could see it weakening. Soon Kotegiri's cooldown would end. Then, it would be over.

The creature exploded in a shower of rainbow-colored sparks. Vertigo turned to his companions: "Are you okay?"

Isami's tear-streaked face told him all he needed to know. She sobbed quietly. Smeet tried his best to be comforting, and failed. The party would spend the rest of the night huddled in a corner. Vertigo resigned himself to taking Isami's watch. The next monster that showed up, was going to earn a complementary sword to the face


	13. No One Knows You're a Dog

All things considered, Moose was having a very good day. Master had taken him for a walk-a walk! He still wasn't sure about this strange place yet. The streets of South Angel weren't his usual walking route, so the dire wolf paid very careful attention to the all-important business of hiking his leg up, and pissing on everything that resembled a tree, lamp post, or fire hydrant. He didn't recognize any of the dogs here. He wondered why.

Certainly, the neighbor's shithead Pomeranian should have left his mark somewhere. Moose didn't like that dog at all. That dog loved to stand out in the backyard and talk shit—but whenever Moose was let out in the backyard to return the favor, the Pomeranian would somehow go back inside. Just the thought of that squirrely little bastard made Moose want to—wait, was that a squirrel? No. False alarm, that was just a bird.

Earlier Alan, Moose, and Alan's friends had gotten treats. Then they had gone and chased what Moose had thought were Squirrels. The dire wolf had torn through the Briar Weasels in a murderous hurricane of death, shaking the unfortunate monsters like toys. Moose had lost count of the number of squirrels he had gotten. He was certain it had been more than five—which was more than he could count.

After that, Alan's friends had left. Master was now taking him to the store. Moose hoped it was a treat store. He liked treats.

A set of silver bells hung across the lintel softly tinkled as Vanya sauntered into Versatile Vials. A young woman of no more than twenty years was standing behind the counter, polishing something with a cloth. While in real life Vanya would have expected at least a greeting, or a polite nod, the lander woman looked up, and said nothing

Nonsensical rules and norms peppered the social landscape of Theldesia. In fact, it seemed like the NPCs were divided into some sort of odd caste structure according to the role they would have played in Elder-Tale. There were story-line NPCs, vendors, trainers, guards, quest-givers, flavor NPCs, and the unassigned. Everyone had their role to play, and a reason for playing it. The castes were passed down from generation to generation, with a prohibition on marrying. Additionally, landers did not marry outside their class. When he had suggested such a thing could be possible, a quest-giver had scoffed and looked at him in sheer horror, replying that "While the gods choose what they will, we should not."

He couldn't really blame the people of the land for not making massive cultural adjustments overnight. It had only been a weak since their world changed. The girl behind the counter who was eying Moose nervously, was almost certainly a vendor. The social norm for vendors, was not to speak, until spoken too. Maybe adventurers didn't bring summons into her shop very often? This wasn't the sort of shop frequented by high-level adventurers, who were more likely to purchase what potions they needed from another player.

"Moose, sit." To the girl's ears, the man immediately sounded odd—and not at all like a proper demigod.

 _Sit?_ Moose cocked his head to the side. He knew that word. OMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH-Master had told him to sit! Sitting meant he would be a good boy. Being a good boy meant treats. He hoped they were cookies. Cookies, no wait, bacon was the best! Master was clearly going to give him bacon. Then again, he couldn't smell bacon. Cheese, that must be it! Master was going to give him cheese! With a muffled whump, the dire wolf sat down on his haunches, wiggling his tail in anticipation.

"Good boy." The adventurer rubbed the giant, black, dog-things head affectionately. The creature then licked his face; it was as if the thing was …. just a dog? Vanya wiped slobber off his face and approached the counter. "Good afternoon."

 _Damn he's cute._

Okay, so maybe seeing good-looking adventurers wasn't _uncommon_. Adventurers with an outright repulsive appearance were in fact a rarity. The men were generally stunning, and the well-endowed nature of most of the adventurer women could make any lander feel downright insecure. At most, you might see a bizarre hairstyle, or outlandish outfit—like that one time a mob of low-level adventurers, both men & women, wearing nothing but leather thongs & ridiculous helmets had raced through the streets for hours. Her grandfather had talked about that incident till the day he had died. No lander would have known that that had been an Atharva-sponsored fundraising event to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy Research.

Doing her best to play it cool, she stuck to the script. "Your gold is welcome here."

Vanya looked at the list she had presented him. It was mostly lower level health and mana potions—nothing rare, but items non-crafters couldn't make for themselves. There were also some curative elixirs for dealing with poisons, and other negative status effects. None of the stock was anything a good alchemist or pharmacist couldn't make for themselves, but Vanya was neither of those subclasses. Additionally, the presence of shops like these prevented the basic potions from being under the market control of any one guild, or player. This lead to a weird situation where the raw materials to create the potions, could go for a higher price than the potions themselves. Vanya had a feeling that this might be about to change.

"You should really raise your prices" he commented, purchasing a massive amount of healing, and mana potions. "Otherwise you'll run out of potions."

The shopkeeper looked at him, confused. This was not normal. "Everything has a price."

"Come on, it's alright." The summoner tried his best to be patient. "I'm not going to eat you if you say something else." He gave what he felt was a friendly smile "I'm Vanya. What's your name?"

Guildmaster Orland had warned them about this. For the landers, interacting with adventurers was fraught with peril. Imploring his players to be as gentle as possible with the people of the land, the Great Wolf of the Inquisition had threatened to eject anyone caught abusing them from the guild. Even in an interaction as simple as buying potions, Vanya could sense the terror in the shopkeeper. Adventurers were demigods. Deviating from the style of interaction the landers had become accustomed to for hundreds of years, was like Cthulhu showing up at 7-11 to buy a pack of cigarettes. For the people of the land, the terror was the worst sort of terror—the fear of the unknown.

A vast & looming chasm lay before her. On one side was the world she always had known, a world where she dealt with adventurers by rote & ironclad procedure. On the other side was the unknown, full of mystery, danger, and possibility. Opening her mouth to speak, the shopkeeper leapt.

"M…m…maria" she stuttered. "A…at this rate I'll be out of h…healing p…potions within a week."

Master was standing at the counter, talking to the shopkeeper. Moose was getting impatient. Where were the treats? He wagged his tail, and whined, trying to get master to pay attention to him. No response. He whined again. Still no response. It was going to be a while. Deciding to attend to other matters, Moose lifted a leg and…

SLURP. SLURP. SLURP.

Vanya looked over his shoulder, aghast. Moose was licking his balls. "Moose, stop it!"

SLURP. SLURP. SLURP.

Moose looked up at his master reproachfully, and then returned to the all-important business of licking his balls. Just because master cleaned his own balls with his left forepaw like a goddamned savage, didn't give him the right to tell Moose to -not- clean himself. Basic hygiene is important, even for good boys. Come to think of it, when did he last have balls? The dire wolf's eyes narrowed, and he looked at them in suspicion. Where -had- they been all this time?

What remained of the shopkeeper's composure dissolved into laughter, Moose's doggy impropriety vanquishing any fear like the warmth of the morning sun evaporating dark, and unpleasant dream. Vanya turned beet red.

"I'm sorry about that-he's usually better behaved." He glared at the dire wolf, who continued his personal hygiene unabashed.

Maria smiled "It's alright. I too once had a pup when I was a young girl. Piper would do the same thing—but I've never seen such a huge wolf-thing act like your pet."

Vanya nodded, noticing that the shopkeeper couldn't have been more then maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. "He's really just a dog, although you wouldn't know looking at him. In real life he's maybe -this- tall, fat, and elderly."

"Real life?" The shopkeeper was confused. "Do you mean the home other adventurers have been speaking of since a few days ago?"

Were all NPCs this self-aware? Was it alright for him to be so free with information when talking to NPCs? Could the revelation of the truth of their existence drive them all to murderous insanity, and despair? Point in favor: if this was a real world, sharing information would go a long way to build trust. Point against: sharing information may lead to unforeseen, negative consequences down the line. Vanya chose trust.

The script was broken. He could see her level, it was barely 16. Her family had run this shop for a very long time—since before her grandfather's time. Like Moose, Alan was not a fundamentally reclusive creature who would rather spend his days playing MMORPGs away from the rest of the world. He liked being around people. Their strange conversation quickly segued into talk of their canine companions, becoming the basis of a rapport. There are far worse things to talk about than the silly, nonsensical behavior of pups.

For her part, Maria found the exchange comforting. Before, the adventurers had been unfathomable, silent demigods. Now one of those demigods was telling her the tale of how Moose had once ruined an important feast by jumping onto the table and devouring half of an entire turkey. Minute by minute, Moose and Vanya seemed less like unfathomable, alien demigods, and more like people she would have met at a market. She learned that Moose had been trapped here the same as Vanya, put into a body that wasn't his own. Poor puppy. He hadn't even chosen to be involved with this world.

"Can I?"

Vanya nodded. "Go ahead. He doesn't bite."

Maria stepped around the counter and approached Moose. He lazily rolled on his back, exposing his underside. "You are such a good boy" she squealed, rubbing the dire wolf's belly.

Moose eyed Vanya, smugly. _See? I get all the bitches._

Vanya sighed. His dog was still better with women then he could ever hope to be. "You really have no shame, do you?"

"You probably want a treat" Maria exclaimed, patting the pockets of her grey petticoat. She cooed to Moose in that peculiar voice dog owners sometimes use when talking to a puppy. "I think I have something for you."

WHUMPWHUMPWHUMPWHUMPWHUMP. Moose sat up straight and his tail became a wiggly black blur of fur. This woman could read his mind! Also, she was going to give him treats. She was his new favorite person. Except master.

Pulling out a biscuit, she offered it to the dire wolf. "Aren't you a good boy?

Gingerly taking the biscuit from her hand, Moose quickly wolfed it down. He looked at Vanya smugly. Damn right he was a good boy-he got a cookie!

Neither of them realized it at first, and by the time either of them bothered to stop and think about how strange things were, they had accidentally become friends. No more business came in the shop that day, and so for the space of a few hours, everyone forgot. Vanya forgot he was trapped in a video game world. Maria forgot she was speaking to an immortal demigod who could kill her with the snap of his fingers. For his part, Moose decided that he had simply forgotten that he had testicles. He was with friends. He was getting treats. All was well.

The sun hung low on the horizon

"Let's go home buddy."

There was a plaintive whine from Moose. He wagged his tail. Moose could smell what Vanya had bought. He was still disappointed that they were not, in fact, treats, but he was excited about going home. The dire wolf knew what that meant. Home meant his favorite toy, his ball, his bowl, his warm and comfy bed, and all the good, familiar smells. He missed those things. You might even say the Labrador was homesick. Moose didn't know what it meant to be homesick, but that was exactly how the dog felt. Master knew how to get home! It could only be a few blocks away at worst. He was going to talk so much shit to the next-door neighbor's Pomeranian.


End file.
